starts to do the attacks again, which i don't know if he'll be able to resist. i think he could stay on script tonight. but i think they moving forward, he might not be able to resist having those kinds of attacks against the people involved in the case. but i do largely expect his message tonight to be the same thing we've heard from him. time and time again, which is they're coming after me because i'm fighting for you. the only issue here is that lately i think a lot of trump's rallies have centered around his own personal grievances, and instead of talking about the issues that americans care about , he's more focused on talking about his own personal grievances and this case, he won't be able to avoid it. all right. well, we will see what will happen. of course, he'll be speaking soon. and sarah thank you very much. thanks to all of you for joining us. our special coverage of the indictment of donald trump continues now with anderson and jake.

we in this country have never seen a day like this before. there are several more likely to come, and it's not even over yet , anderson within the next few minutes, we expect to hear from donald trump, speaking at mar-a-lago, his first on camera statements since returning from new york as a criminal defendant facing 34 felony charges in connection with an alleged scheme to cover up extra marital encounters, one with a porn star , one with a former playboy playmate of the year. we ran the comments from district attorney alvin bragg earlier, so too, will we bring trump to you and jake, whichever donald trump shows up whether he's angry to find defensive, mocking or all of the above, it will be a far different donald trump. from the one earlier today on the 15th floor, the manhattan criminal court building with no one holding the door for him on the way into his arraignment, or the donald trump, who sat stone faced at the defense table for the first what could be many

such appearances to come. we don't yet know what the former president makes of this. we could learn shortly, and as we wait for him to speak, we have, as only cnn can a team of correspondents. legal and political analysts help make sense of what happened today and what happens next. let's start with cnn's christian homes at mar-a-lago. i've got the mood there. anderson. this is a very different mood from these kind of events that we normally see at mar-a-lago. those are usually more subdued events. we saw it with his 2024 election campaign announcement. you have a seated event lots of members. this has much more of a rally feel. we just had some entrance. i guess you could call it by don jr and marjorie taylor green and matt gates, where they were escorted down the middle road. you have a lot of people standing. we've seen roger stone, mike lindell. a lot of cheering. at one point, the crowd broke out cheering carry one when they saw kerry lake so it has become quite a who's who of trump world that is here. but the big question is,

as you said, what trump are we going to get? i spoke to someone who was very close to the former president, who said they were concerned about him that after seeing him in that courthouse, that was not the trump that they expected, however, i also talked to another source who believes that trump's messaging is going to remain political and that he is going to continue to beat down what we have heard time and time again since 2015 from donald trump, which is they are not coming for me coming from you, and i am just standing in the way so forth. wait to see what donald trump we are going to get in just a few moments. we expect him any minute now. alright christian homes. thanks very much was waiting for former president to respond to the day's events. when i check in with cnn's paula reid was outside the courthouse in lower manhattan. so can you just walk us through the charges that were instilled today, paul right through this indictment, anderson and he's being charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. these are being charged as a felony and in order to charge these as a felony in new york state, you have to prove that these records

were falsified in furtherance of another crime, and it's not clear exactly what that larger crime is because it's not charged here. if prosecutors want to argue that these documents were falsified, and we're talking specifically about the way michael cohen was reimbursed for the hush money that he paid to stormy daniels if they want to argue that those documents were falsified in furtherance of something that is a federal election law violation that shaky legal ground that's an untested legal theory. it's not clear that that would ultimately be successful. at a press conference, the district attorney suggested that this might be a violation of state election law. but that's not in the indictment or the statement of facts. so at this point look, this is one of the most historic case is arguably the most significant case right now in an american court system appears to be built on a pretty shaky foundation because it's not clear what the larger crime is. and look i've passed to bar exams. i'm having a little trouble following allen brags argument here, so it's unclear if the average manhattan er

we'll be able to follow it as well. and even if they can, even if they get a conviction, it's still has to survive appeals, which can be difficult for cases built a novel legal theories. obviously, members of the grand jury did follow the case, although it's a much different bar that has to pass in order to get the grand jury as opposed to an actual impaneled jury pool. what is the next timeline in this case because the next court date is not until december. i think exactly. it will be another eight months before they'll be back in court before this judge, but we can expect motions from the defense team. the three defense attorneys, three of them who are with the former president in court. today, they made a beeline for reporters held a mini press conference out here, which is a little surprising, but they clearly wanted to talk about this indictment. they made it clear that they're going to file motions to dismiss and launched other challenges against this indictment. now that we've seen the facts, and it's again unclear exactly what the larger crime is. we can expect that they're going to file a lot of emotions likely, also including

a motion to change venue. they say they are not considering that at this point, they will have to do that to preserve all of their options. on appeal. anderson these lawyers are going to be busy long before that december hearing would appreciate it. thanks. not for the first time today we're joined here by cnn. political commentators van jones and david urban van served as special adviser to president obama david, his campaign adviser, the former president, also cnn. political commentator and former trump white house communications director eliza for griffin's chief correspondent, anchor katelyn polantz and two former federal prosecutors here from the southern district of new york. cardozo law school professor jessica roth and cnn senior legal analyst elie honig . caitlin, you're in the at the courthouse today in the hall. what are you hearing about? from team trump. one thing that everyone is reflecting on is his expression. when he walked through those doors, as you showed earlier today, he had this incredibly stern look on. that is something that even people in his inner circle. people who are going there to mar-a-lago tonight have been talking about is just the demeanor he had, and publicly

you were hearing that he is in great spirits. that's all his attorneys are saying that he is very resolute. he's very determined. i think he's a lot angrier than that. when you talk to people who speak more candidly about how he's viewing this, obviously he was charged today. he became a criminal defendant in court today. um and that is obviously not something that well, he wanted to happen. it remains to be seen, really, even to people who are close to trump. what he has his demeanor is going to be tonight. they had written a version of the speech yesterday. of course, he often goes off prompter, especially with something that is solely focused on what happened didn't make a call into some sort of a prayer call in which he was obviously very defined and probably echoed some of the things he's going to say. and he said, essentially what he's been saying, which is that we believe leaves. this is a prosecution by people who hate the country framing it. is this attack on him? that is something you can expect to hear. tonight we'll be watching to see two things. one is first lady melania trump there. she did not come with him to new york. this is something that has caused really intense issues between the two of them this case, particularly for

obvious reasons. the other thing is to see if he does continue with his attacks on ellen bragged the district attorney here, because if you read the court transcript today with the judge was saying is this is something that the investigators brought up these attacks that he has continued to put out there. the judge did say that people need to watch their language, but they said it to both by the way to the prosecution and the defense which really stood out to me. that's what i just underlined, he said. such restraints of the most serious at least intolerable and first amendment rights, saying he wasn't even considering or close to imposing a gag order on trump here, but he did. i would encourage council both sides, including the people, meaning the investigators here to please speak to your witnesses because trump's attorneys were arguing about michael cohen going out and talking publicly about what he has said, want to play something that alvin bragg, the district attorney, said at his press conference. under new york state law is a felony. to falsifying business records with intent to defraud and intent to conceal another crime. that is exactly what this case is about.

34 false statements. made to cover up other crimes. these are felony crimes in new york state. no matter who you are. we cannot and will not normalizes serious criminal conduct and ellie just in layman's terms, if you could walk us through what the indictment is, and also why the other crimes were not named. so this is all about hush money, and, more specifically, it's all about hush money paid to stormy daniels. the statement of facts mentions karen macdougal and the dormant they're not part of the actual indictment. they're there for overall background and color. how do we get to 34 counts? the crime here is not paying hush money. the crime here is falsifying documents and what the prosecutors doing this indictment as they charge every check every ledger every invoice as its own count as its own false document. that's a misdemeanor, low level offense. the only way this gets bumped up

each of these counts gets bumped up to a felony is if you can show that they falsified the records. to commit some second crime. and here's what we're going to run into legal problems because the indictment does not say what that second crime is, which is completely inexplicable . to me. the entire point of an indictment is to tell the defendant here's what you're charged with. here's what you're defending against. and in today's conference, the defense lawyer said. we need to know that now alvin bragg, gave us three options. at his press conference, he said. federal campaign election law but this is new york state, so he's gonna have a legal problem there, he said. state election law, but this is a campaign for president , which is a federal office and then he very briefly and there's literally one word about this. in the statement, of fact, said something about tax, but they didn't take a deduction. so it's not clear what that theory is, either. so, look, i am a big believer in alvin bragg is a former colleague of mine. i believe in his capacity and his integrity, but i have real questions about this. what do you think? what do you expect to hear tonight? well, the president's former presence

already kind of alluded to where he's going. he truth doubt something suggesting, you know there's no there there. the biggest shock was how little there was in the indictment. so i think you're going to see a mix is his social was a verb. we're going to make it a perfect i think he's going to be indignant, but i also think he's going to be a little celebratory. i mean, the reality is he has people like mitt romney, a foe of his coming out and even defending him. he's got the entire field and, you know, potential field that's going to be running against him. coming out and saying, you know, this is a witch hunt. this is a miscarriage of justice. i actually expect that this may be closer and have more fanfare to an election announcement than the original one we saw several months ago. quick thoughts from everybody do so i would say cnn just had to pull this week, said 76% of americans believe that this prosecution was politically motivated. and i think after listening to ellie and others today and reading this indictment i think trump's gonna wave it and say this is politically motivated. americans are going to believe it because there is no there there. he's going to wave a jubilee and say, you know, come get me. we're

gonna get this dismissed emotions. there's not gonna be a trial. i think that we're gonna hear trump talk about just in a little bit. look, i had hoped that there would be more in the indictment. ah and i think because it is so thin. it's giving aid and comfort to some of the worst people in american politics. i mean, it's like a rogue's gallery of people just jumping up and down being happy . i think that's not a good thing but also want to stick up for alvin bragg. listen it takes courage to take on donald trump. how do you know nobody else has done it. and so, to the extent that you do have a prosecutor who believes in the rule of law and who also thinks that our elections shouldn't be polluted with lies and hush money and false statements, and he's trying to take a stand. i think we need to be at least as supportive of alvin bragg at this stage as this rogue's gallery is of donald trump. jessica what do you think of the case? well i was disappointed that there wasn't more in the indictment in terms of laying out with the legal theory was with more precision. um today was supposed to be the big reveal where we would get that

information and to the extent that we have a sense of what the theory of the case is, in terms of what are the crimes that would have been further or concealed by the falsification of records? it's not in the indictment, it's alluded to obliquely in the statement of facts in his comfort press conference that under the law, he doesn't have to state what the underlying crimes are. it that may be the case, and it may be also that he's trying to leave options open in terms of what the evidence most, uh firmly supports in terms of what that other crime was, but it would have been, i think helpful if he had committed to a theory of the case, even if it was in the alternative to lay out exactly what those crimes were, even if ultimately the jury would decide. well, at least one of them was furthered by the faucet and no matter what, we were not going to see this go to court until when is the next hearing date? which to me is notable because it actually go to trial. that right, so the next court date is december now if we do the math from there a judge is not going to set a trial date within 456 months, and now we're looking middle of 2024. can you see a judge trying

this right in the middle of primary season, want to go back to jake and dc jake? all right. thank you so much. anderson with me here tonight, cnn's john king, abby, phillip and dana bash. we also have cnn senior law enforcement analyst and former fbi deputy director andrew mccabe and cnn special correspondent jamie gangel. um andrew, let me start with you. um when you talk to your former colleagues in the legal profession. um what are you hearing from them in terms of their take on this indictment? what i'm hearing just a t u up is it looks like the district attorney bragg has set up. you know, very solid case for 34 misdemeanors related to business business fraud, but not a huge amount of confidence in the attempt by mr bragg to turn this into 34 felony charges. what are you hearing? very, very similar commentary, jake so i if i had to characterize it, it's

disappointment. i think everyone was hoping we would see more about the direction that they intend to take this prosecution. what is the legal theory? that ties that very solid misdemeanor case 34 counts of misdemeanors to the intent to conceal another crime, which is what makes it a felony. it's simply isn't there now. it's possible that the d a has an elaborate and solid theory that's backed up by a lot of evidence, and he has just decided to conceal that at this point. that would be a i think it's a strange decision on his part, but nevertheless i'm giving him the benefit of the doubt at the end of the day if all of our legal friends read this indictment and don't see a way to have felony, it's hard to imagine convincing a jury that that they should get there and we and we heard the former national security adviser to donald trump. john bolton, not a fan of donald trump opposite expressing disappointment. ah and saying he thinks that donald

trump is guilty as sin of what's alleged, but this is not enough to go after a president with an indictment for the first time in american history. all of our parents have told us at one time or another first impressions, count, and legal sources said there was not enough detail. they thought that it was a mistake from a historic point of view that this was the first case to come out that way, one source said. to me, this is donald trump. you don't bring a knife to a gunfight, so we don't know what we don't know. but this was not, and i mean, i think that that's in some ways. it doesn't even matter what order this came in, i think either way, whether this is the first case of the last case, i think the burden um in a case involving a former president is a lot more information a lot more legal justification for the charges, and it is puzzling as the previous panel with anderson was just discussing why the

statutes that would make this a felony weren't even laid out clearly and so that people can really see what laws they're alleging that he broke. i think that's really puzzling to me because the public interest in this case is so high as a prosecutor, i think the legal underpinnings of all of this really does need to be rock solid. you know, i'm i'm not a lawyer. i can't say whether this is going to be a good case or bad case. will they win or will they lose? it's clearly not a slam dunk case at and it seems very clear that they have a lot of legal proving to do in the courtroom, and the trump team has a lot to challenge them on, you know, as we've been able to digest this and really sit with the actual indictment. i've been thinking a lot about the fact that we have to potentially differentiate between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, the letter or the actual case. might be hard to prove. but what it's laying out, particularly in this statement,

um, in the statement that goes along with it. it is. a fundamental attempt. alleged alleged attempt by then candidate trump. when he saw that he was in big trouble. after access. hollywood came out. i thought he was to change and alter the outcome of the election. by using money to pay off somebody who he thought would hurt him. and the question is whether or not this is the forum and these are the actual laws. that. will be used successfully. to prosecute him for that, and you know, even trampled and other people who know him. nobody is really said oh, no, he didn't do we know he he did it, according to michael cohen, who went to jail for in part for this so the question is whether or not donald trump will be found culpable under this, um

new york statute and john, do you think um there's any case. to be made here. that what district attorney brag, assuming there isn't some rabbit that he's going to pull out of the hand that the critics of his who say he is now just severely lowered the threshold for the kinds of charges that a local district attorney even in the places largest manhattan can bring against a major political figure. for what, at least as of now, all we know are misdemeanor business fraud. um that that is something that that's a lie that he has now crossed that will be used against democrats and others. i think that is a huge risk in the long term again to andrew's point to give him the benefit of the doubt he gets to make his case in court. but he says he had no legal requirement to explain the underpinnings that make it a felony. he may not have a legal requirement. did he have a public

requirement? did you have a public good requirement? where you going to bring 34 felony counts against the former president, knighted states. if you're a democrat, if you're under attack, if you do have past statements on the record about going after trump. yes i believe he did. i believe he did have more of a public requirement at this moment not to lay out his entire case. he doesn't have to give the trump people everything but to give a stronger explanation of how to connect the dots between a very strong case of just bad behavior by a business and bad behavior by a man who happened to be president. in cooking the books of a business to pay to cover up personal misconduct. did he have a public responsibility to say more? i think that's going to be the conversation until we get to the legal until he gets to prove it in court. in the meantime, you're looking at this picture, and i can just tell you the incoming i have the same incoming from legal experts tonight, but the incoming from adult republicans who think donald trump is bad for the party is horrible today because they believe this helps him in the short term. anyone who tells you they know how this is going to affect when people vote in iowa next february. this other legal cases coming. we all need

to be extra careful. we don't know today. this helps donald trump makes him stronger for the republican nomination, puts his opponents in a bit of a box. requires those who want to oppose him to have courage to step out about this, so it helps him in the short term. does it move the 25% of republicans who are never trumpers something to watch over the next few months? can he win a general election? if 25% of republicans are still never trumpers? never mind independence. never mind people in the suburbs, so republicans have a long term problem thinking if donald trump wins the nomination, it hurts them. but those republicans who believe that are looking at today and saying he is stronger today who knows about tomorrow and we're watching right now, people coming out. this is a live from mar-a-lago. we're expecting donald trump to come out and speak. we see eric trump and his wife, laura, other people from the inside circle. dan scavino. jason miller names that we have heard in recent months, mainly for legal fights to try to get them to testify in different investigations having to do with january 6th or having

to do with classified documents , and i do expect, jamie gangel, you tell me what you think i do expect that we will see much more boisterous, much more to use. one of his favorite words, braggadocious donald trump, uh than we saw earlier today, when he seems much more chastened in court, we did think that he was going to speak in new york. we were told by his people that he might he chose not to ensure his lawyers want him to be somber. uh but there's only so much you can do when it comes to trying to control donald trump. jamie, he has been speaking in one way , and that is on social media. he's had these outrageous posts , including fundraising with pretend mug shot, not a real mug shot. they just made one up. put it on a t shirt. to raise money , and i think that now he's back on his home turf. he is not in custody anymore. i wonder whether he did not speak going

in to the arraignment this morning because even though we were led to believe that he wanted to, he was in custody at that point, and they may have said no. no stopping, but i think, jake, you're absolutely correct. and the republican sources that i spoke to today like ambassador bolton who do not want trump to be the nominate. thank you greater chance. now let's listen in. was coming out. with the proud to be an american song. as typical for one of his rallies. this is, of course, is not a rally per se. it's his first public remarks since being arrested. ah! and indicted and

arraigned in new york. whatever one thinks of donald trump, uh, that is a sad turn of events for the country. um on its face. this is. an opportunity he's taking, of course to try to rally his supporters and trying . to make something good out of what is empirically bad experience.

god bless you. all. god bless you all. and i never thought anything like this. could happen. in america never thought it could happen. the only crime that i have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it. from the beginning, the democrats spied on my campaign. remember that? they attacked me with an onslaught of fraudulent investigations. russia russia, russia, ukraine, ukraine, ukraine. impeachment hooks, number one impeachment hoax

number two the illegal and unconstitutional rate on mar-a-lago right here. lying to the fisa courts. the fbi and doj relentlessly pursuing republicans unconstitutional changes to election laws by not getting approvals from state legislators. the millions of votes illegally stuffed into ballot boxes and all koran government cameras. and just recently, the fbi and doj and collusion with twitter and facebook. in order not to say anything bad about the hunter biden laptop from hell. which exposes the biden family as criminals in which according to the pollsters would have made a 17 point difference in the election result. and we needed a

lot less than that, like about 16.9. it would have been in our favor. not my favorite our favor because our country is going to hell. we remember the 51 intelligence agents. who said hunter biden's laptop was russian disinformation. it didn't exist. it was russian disinformation. remember that? and that was all confirmed strongly by the fbi. when they all knew that it wasn't russian. disinformation. and so much more. our elections were like those of a third world country. and now this massive election interference at a scale never seen before in our country. beginning with the radical left . george soros backed prosecutor alvin bragg of new york. who campaigned on the fact that he

would get. president trump. i gotta get him. i'm going to get him. this is a guy campaigning. you want to get president trump at any cost, and this before he knew anything about me. didn't know a thing about me. he was campaigning. as it turns out, virtually everybody that has looked at this case, including rhinos and even hardcore democrats. say there is no crime. and that it should. never have been brought never have been. everybody. even people that. big fans have said it, they said this is not the right thing to do. it's an insult to our country as the world is already laughing at us. for so many other reasons, like are open voters. are incompetent withdrawal from afghanistan, where we left behind american citizens $85 billion worth of

the best military equipment in the world. lost 13 magnificent young lives and far too many. to mention that are so badly hurt with the loss of arms and legs and facial obliteration. the most embarrassing time. in our country's history, in my opinion. then our give up on energy, independence and even energy dominant, we're going to be dominant within six months, more than any other nation times two. we had this all just three years ago are raging crime statistics. if you look in democrat run cities, numbers the likes of which we have never seen before. the open threats by various countries. of the use of nuclear weapons. something never mentioned or discussed by outside nations during the trump administration, in which could

very well lead under the biden administrations leadership to an all out nuclear world war three can happen. we're not very far away from it, believe it or not. and economy that has been crippled by the biggest inflation we have seen in more than 60 years and a military that i used to defeat isis. in four weeks. they said it would take four years. four weeks to kill al baghdadi and solomon e. that is now gone, woke at the top levels by trying to indoctrinate everyone down to the lowest ranking patriot. but now they have really stepped up their efforts by indicting the 45th president. of the united states who received. 75 million votes, which is more than any sitting president in the history

of our country. and in the wings . they've got a local racist democrat district attorney in atlanta. who is doing everything in her power to indict me. over an absolutely perfect phone call even more perfect than the one i made with the president of ukraine. remember a kid kept saying, that's a perfect call. this one was more perfect. nobody said, sir, you shouldn't say that many people on the phone. or hung up in discussed because of something i inappropriately said, because nothing was said wrong. in fact, at the end of the call, we agreed to continue our conversation about election fraud. an election fraud specifically in georgia. at a later time. many people on the phone, including lots of lawyers , nobody found anything wrong with that perfect call until a book promotion tour. many months

later. all of a sudden, they say, you know, i remember chump making a call. let's look at that. this fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election. and it should be dropped immediately. then you have a radical left lunatic known as a bomb thrower. who is harassing hundreds of my people day after day. over the boxes hoax. you know the boxes hooks. as we call it just so everyone knows i come under what's known as the presidential records act, which was designed and approved by congress long ago. just for this reason. under the act. i'm supposed to negotiate with narrow the national archives and records administration. which as of this date is a radical left

troublemaking organization that red flags the constitution of the united states and the bill of writers dangerous. and triggering, can you imagine? this is what we have to deal with. but there is no criminality under the presidential records act. that is not what it's all about. we were negotiating and very. good faith proper way in order to return some or all of the documents that i openly and in very plain sight. i brought with me to mar-a-lago from our beautiful white house, just as virtually every other president has done in the past. when fbi and doj officials with narrower here. i told my lawyer to show them the very secure storage room. in which they were locked. the fbi. still request in

writing was could you please put another lock? on the door. we immediately complied. it's a lot different than the biden situation, isn't it? the next thing i know we were rated by many gun toting fbi agents. who took whatever they wanted, including my passports and medical records. everybody was in shock. nobody had ever heard of such a raid before. we can't even believe it. who would think that that could happen today? i immediately thought of the fourth amendment that protects against unreasonable search and seizure. but they did it anyway, because our justice system has become lawless. they're using it now, in addition to everything else to win elections. apparently they're not looking at me through the view of the non criminal presidential records act. they came up with a new one. this is a new one. and

they're looking at me through the espionage act. think of that. how does that sound of 1917 where the penalty his death. even though that has absolutely nothing to do with openly taking boxes of documents and mostly clothing and other things to my home. which president obama has done. the bushes have done. jimmy carter's done. ronald reagan is done. everybody's done tracked. hillary clinton get rid of 33,000 emails and that was okay. but nobody's done it like joe biden. this lunatic special prosecutor named jack smith. i wonder what it was prior to a change. who others of his ilk say. he is even worse than they are. is only looking at trump get your biden took massive amounts more documents. even

removed many boxes to chinatown. do you believe that just got $10 million from china? where did that come from? i guess they were banking on hunter's expertise. and had other stored and unsecured offices in pennsylvania and strewn all over his garage floor where he is now very famous corvette. is also stored. all over the floor, including classified documents. but that's okay. perhaps most importantly, he has 1850 boxes in delaware. which he is refusing to give up. but isn't that real obstruction? that's obstruction. as president. i have the right to declassified documents. and the process is automatic. if i take them with me, it's automatic declassified. biden was vice president. he had

absolutely no right to declassify as vice president. he doesn't come under the non criminal presidential records actually comes under the very criminal federal records act, unfortunately for him, but it's not going to matter because they don't follow the law. which has very severe penalties. he had classified documents that he took while he was a senator. which is absolutely inexcusable , and other senators, including democrats. are outraged, but it's not being harassed and hounded. like the people. who work for me or in fact, they seem to have forgotten about his documents entirely. so many thousands and thousands. it's okay with him. they like to say that i'm obstructing which i'm not because i was working with narrow very nicely until the raid on my home. but biden is obstructing by making it impossible to get the 1850 bucks

is or explain why many documents were located in chinatown. can't explain it. why were they in chinatown? i don't know. lastly, i'm under investigation. this time a civil investigation by another racist in reverse. who also campaigned doing i will get trump. i will get them. this was our campaign. never ran for office. i will get them. her name is leticia james. and she proclaimed while campaigning quote i look forward to going into the office of the attorney general every single day suing him and then going home. before she knew me. she announced. what is fueling my soul right now is trump. and that she had her eyes on trump tower. those eyes are focused on trump town. i didn't know the young lady. she even

assured her supporters in an election. promise that we're going to definitely sue him. we're going to be a real pain in the ass. he's going to know my name personally. yeah. and then she claimed that i was an illegitimate president. thank you think of that, with all with all we did with all we did on energy with all we did on the military or taxes because tax cuts in history. biggest regulation cuts in history. right to try. people able to get drugs now that aren't approved. hopefully, you don't have that problem. but he should. james vowed to use every area of the law to quote investigate president trump and his business transactions. those transactions are going to be investigated, she said. and that of her

family. and his family. because we're going after his family, and we're going after them hard. this is all before entering office and all before knowing anything at all about me, but she was going to get me. this is why, along with unrelenting crime so many people in companies are leaving. new york. she said that i falsified my financial statements, but in fact we're proving and will prove that my financial statements were substantially more than we submitted not less. and in all cases have a strong disclaimer clause and then which tells the institutions that may look at that if they want to. not to rely on the statement. but they've got a problem. with their case because number one i'm very under leveraged. they can't believe it all the stuff they read and gave and have very

little debt relative to the value of assets. and importantly , not one bank has lost even $1 . she was investigating me to save banks. they have very good lawyers. but they didn't lose a dollar with us during this period of time. in fact, the banks we're talking about. made almost $200 million off donald trump. they like me very much. we never missed a payment never got a default notice had a great relationship with all of them. i don't need bags. we have a lot of cash. i built a great business with my family built a fantastic business. i have a son here has done a

great job and have another son here has done a great job. and ivanka and baron will be great. someday he's tall. he's tall, and he's smart. but i have a great family and they've done a fantastic job and we appreciate it very much. they've gone through hell. so she's suing me over banks that weren't defrauded. when she should be focused on violent crime that's driving people out of the state. this is a persecution, not an investigation. she's put our family through hell. it's cost hundreds of millions of dollars to defend. but our heads are held very, very high. they want to settle the case, but i want no part of that. so here we are now. where we were today. in a

city that was so gracious four or five years ago. but now we're there spend time there today as you possibly read. with a local failed district attorney. charging a former president of the united states for the first time in history. on the basis that every single pundit and legal analyst said there is no case. there's no case, they kept saying there's no case. virtually everyone. but as far worse than that, because he knew there was no case. that's why last week he delayed for a month and then immediately took that back. and through this ridiculous indictment together, came out today. everybody said, this is not really an indictment. there's nothing here. my lawyers came to me and

they said there's nothing here. they're not even saying what you did. the criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked massive amounts of grand jury in from the. for which he should be prosecuted. or at a minimum, he should resign. and alvin brags wife confirmed to report that claimed her husband has trump nailed on felonies. she has since lockdown her twitter account. his chief prosecutor who represented the democrats and crooked hillary clinton and a firm run by chuck schumer's brother, robert. he quit the firm in order to go to work in the d a office in order to get trump. can you imagine that hillary clinton's lawyer, democrat lawyer democrat firm. ultimately, he quit as chief prosecutor because bragg didn't think he had a case thinking that same guy that brought this

ridiculous thing today. during his investigation. this prosecutor named mark pomerantz wrote and published a book. saying all sorts of privileged things and has been very strongly rep record. earlier reprimanded. he was reprimanded so strongly. i've never seen anything like it. probably the end of it. but what he did was probably very illegal. but he was very, very strongly reprimanded. even district attorney bragg was furious with him. they were having a tremendous fight in the office because of it. but hope is never lost, because various prosecutors and the ideas office also quit because they thought president trump was being treated very unfairly. how about that in that? great i love them. i'd like to meet them. i'd like to meet them. the office. even had a web page. meet the team of executives. who have done this

to president trump. that was the title and that nice they immediately had to take it down. meanwhile, overall crime in new york was up 30% last year. much more than that the year before, with felony assaults, robberies and burglaries all up by massive massive numbers, not the same place that i know not the same place that, you know. and this is where we are right now. i have a trump hating judge. with the trump hating wife and family. whose daughter worked for kamala harris. and now receives money from the biden harris campaign and a lot of it. we recently had another trial and the same judge told the fine man who worked for me for many, many years. that if you admit your guilt you will be in jail for 90 days. but if you don't. if we go through a trial, and

you're found guilty, you're going away for 10 years and maybe longer. which for 75 year old man with a great family. really means life. what the prosecutors and judge did to that man. i will never forget. because it's right out of the old soviet union. that's where we are. they said. you say anything about trump, meaning that's bad. and you won't even have to serve the 90 days you'll walk free. and they say that too many of my employees we have this jack smith lunatic. threatening people every single day. through his representatives. they're threatening jail terms. but talk about trump and you'll go free. this is where we are as a nation who would have thought they can't beat us at the ballot box, so they try and beat us through the law. that's the country in

which we live. however right now the usa is a mess. our economy is crashing. inflation is out of control. russia has joined with china can you believe that? saudi arabia has joined with iran. china russia, iran and north korea have formed together. as a menacing and destructive coalition would have never happened. if i were your president would never have happened. norwood russia attacking ukraine have happened . all of those lives will be saved. all of those beautiful cities would be standing. our currency is crashing and will soon no longer president speaking tonight at mar-a-lago back here in new york with the panel, um alyssa, i mean, this is a reprise of we were waiting for him to talk about what happened today finally talked about it a little bit of the end, there were cutting out of it, but a reprise of pretty much

every grievance. if you were a republican. who cares about the republican party and the future of the republican party and you are watching this tonight realizing this man now maybe more powerful in the republican party than he was yesterday, at least a little bit more. safe in the republican party than it was yesterday. what he's going through your mind. at first, you want to laugh you want to say? i mean, this is the opposite of reaganesque. it's absurd. it's an airing of grievances, almost the greatest hits of donald trump. but today he solidifies his place as the consummate leader of the republican party. he's been beating the number two ron desantis by near double digits in a number of poles, and now he's in a place where the party is consolidating around him. and he is running on a message that is, you cannot trust your institutions. he's going through everything from the jack smith investigation. the mar-a-lago investigation. i'll be curious to see if he brings up january 6th. he is playing to the base of the base . now as a republican. i'm stunned by the idea that we think this is a smart general election candidate. somebody who

lost in 2020, who lost a seats in 2022 in 2018. but here he is , the party is still squarely behind him. elected republicans are defending him despite being the first indicted president and former president in history. i mean for somebody who has not paid attention to the ramblings of the former president for quite a while, it's ah, it's not surprising, but it's remarkable that he is still i mean, you could look at this and think. oh, this is four years ago. and it's interesting because the former president, you know as a was a television star 13 seasons , he had his own show, and i would think that he would realize you know, if people see the same show over and over, they're gonna change the channel. at some points. we need to refresh the programming and that you thought you might see that tonight by having some refreshed programming or even more concise program where you can really talk about maybe why alvin bragg went after maybe you talk about look, this wasn't getting prosecuted. advanced didn't do it brag wasn't doing it. what happened? pomerantz went out, wrote a book and kind of put, brag in a bad spot.

brag, tried to brad tried to stop the publication of the book , but that was a written speech . but i'm saying you could have written a speech like that. that really pulled it together and made it a coherent narrative. so most americans are turning in and watch it and say that makes sense that what's why i did it. you know, that's what the trump attorneys want is to attack the merits of the case. that's what they have been talking about saying it's not strong. you saw him there. he was going after the judge saying it is a trump hating judge. he attacked alvin bragg, who is going after the judge's daughter went after the judge's daughter as well for her ties. he talked about the judge's wife, i'll say today, the judge said that he was not close to putting a gag order in place on trump. but he did say please refrain from making comments or engaging in conduct that has the potential to incite violence, create civil unrest or jeopardize the safety and well being of any individuals that was at the same time and basically the same time judge was saying that wasn't donny jr tweeting out something about the judge's daughter tweeted a link to the point. the point i think they're trying to make is that she's very she's a she's a political operative. she's been a political operative whole life

and she's partisan. i think that's their child point. they're trying to make the point. trump and trump jr making. we had a trump attorney on last week, and we are asked about the judge and the merits and they said that they believe the judge here was fair and was going to say i'm just saying, that's what i think was being remember. let me just say what they want. one thing i think is important. like um, that was a black hole of grievance. that he pulled the country into and i think democrats should be relieved. because there was a moment that he had tonight. as somebody who's been victimized in his mind. and he could have made a bridge to other people in the country who are hurting. there are a lot of people in the country who are hurting who have felt they've been mistreated. he didn't talk about any of those people don't talk about people in apple actually didn't talk about people in the hood didn't talk about people. he talked about himself, and he continued to pull people down into this black hole of his own personal grievance. and i think that to the extent that people were disappointed by what alvin bragg did earlier, they can be equally disappointed by what trump just did tonight. also reminder of what the next two years is going

to look like what this. this race is going to look like, if you think there has been some change if you think that that this is a forward looking campaign, as of now, it certainly doesn't seem to think you'll see a lot of these candidates who get in this race that 1% 2% now i don't think they plan on going anywhere for a while. i think they think that at some point in the future, whether it's indictment to or indictment, three americans will get tired of hearing that watching the same old show will change the channel. they're gonna want different candidates . just remember the occasion for this grand celebration is the man got indicted. he is charged in a criminal case state of new york against donald trump. he sat at the defendants. table today. that's what has kicked off this raucous, bizarre celebration. i just have to call this up the attacks on the judge on alvin bragg on family members are utterly reprehensible. we can disagree. we have disagreed , have substantive conversations about the merits of the charges here of the merits of the evidence, but these attacks are

out of bounds and they're dangerous and we need to continue. to call them out. i want a second. what ella just said. i mean, these were a veiled threats. i mean, this was an effort just to put out there among his supporters. the existence of the judge's wife and judges, daughter and insinuate that they were problematic for him. um, and i really hope that todd blanche and his other lawyers are going to be speaking with him sternly this evening and bringing to his attention exactly what the judge said at the arraignment today. but how the judge now is not going to impose a gag order but clearly would entertain an order if he thought that was appropriate. and part of the reason. the judge said that he wasn't close to a gag order because trump is a candidate for president of the united states. but can i know trump soon? very worried about the jack smith investigations much more so maybe than even what happened today. he was implying the special counsel has changed his name. that is something i've heard that, he said privately, but much more time on the documents investigation, which really stood out daniel dale, with the fact check of a number of the lives of the former president just spoke also be

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of his arrest and arrangements that we allow the president, the former president to give his view of the proceeding and then obviously, it was somewhat incoherent and then began turning into a campaign event. at which point we cut away. um, andy mccabe, let me start with you. because um, you thought this was a missed opportunity, given the fact that this indictment was not resoundingly embraced by democrats and legal experts across the country. and yet we got that. mess of a speech. massive missed opportunity. i have never seen a defendant indicted and actually come away from the indictment with a little bit of momentum. you saw that today that indictment landed like like a dud, right? commentators across the spectrum are saying, boy there's really not much in here raises all kinds of questions about the legal theory behind this case, he's gonna they're gonna have a tough time facing motions to dismiss, um, an

unimpressive document, and he could have stood in front of that group of supporters this evening and pointed simply to that fact. and highlighted his own claimed innocence and use this as a moment to say, see rally behind me. this shouldn't happen to anyone in this country. we've debased the criminal justice system, which we all rely on. but no. instead what you got was millions of votes illegally stuffed into ballot boxes in front of government camera. not even sure what that means or the fact that we're right on the brink, apparently of all out nuclear war war three. yeah it's just it's just swinging a minute boxes thing was just a lie. it was it was a ton of false statements and an airing of grievances with us now to talk about everything today, former trump attorney and fixer and named as lawyer a. in the court documents, michael cohen. he is the author of the book revenge. how donald trump weaponized the u. s. department of justice. against his critics. he's also

the host of two podcasts. political beatdown is the first the other is called me a copper . michael my understanding is that you were not watching his remarks this evening. but today is obviously a day that you've talked about and thought about for a long time was anything that came out today in any way. uh surprising. was there anything that stood out to you? well you know, when it comes to the district attorney's case, this is the district attorney's case. i was merely someone who provided testimony and documentation. and this is for alvin bragg to make the case before the judge and the jury, if, in fact that it gets that far, which i suspect that it will at the end of the you're right. i wasn't watching today i had some personal things to take care of. that took me out of new york. obviously as soon as i came back, i started to read. all of the nonsense with the typical donald trump. ah you

know rallies despite the fact it was inside of mar-a-lago. it's the typical grievance complaining, moaning and belly aching about how bad the industry you know how bad this country has been treating him. yeah one of the things that i thought was interesting that you can speak about now that the indictment is public comes in the statement of facts. um one of the criticisms of the potential case against donald trump is not the misdemeanor charges of business fraud that that by all accounts seems pretty solid. it's the question of whether or not this rises to become a felony, which it does. if these this business fraud can be proven to have been done to hide other crimes and the argument, although mr bragg did not specify what those other crimes might be, the argument was, it might have something to do. um with the campaign election financing and whether or not these were campaign contributions that you made that

david pecker of the national enquirer and its parent company made and here's something interesting because we're talking about this earlier about whether or not donald trump could say, as john edwards did. i wasn't trying to hide any of these affairs from voters. i was just trying to hide it from my wife and my family, but twice in this document you are cited. once the defendant, donald trump, did not want the information about karen macdougal, the affair with karen macdougal to become public because he because he was concerned about the effect it could have on his candidacy. that's on page four of the statement and then again on page six on the stormy daniels matter. trump instructed you that if they could delay the payment until after the election , they could avoid paying altogether because at that point it would not matter if the story became public. he's clearly mr bragg based on your comments based on your testimony under oath, making the argument that donald trump didn't care. if melania found out about this,

this was all about hiding these affairs from voters. and i can promise you that mr bragg in his qualified team will be providing a significant amount of documentary evidence that will corroborate all of the allegations or the statements that he has in this document. but is that is that not only your testimony before the grand jury, but also your your view that you would say this evening, donald trump. did this ordered this asked these payments, much money payments to be made because he wanted to keep this information from voters, not because he cared about keeping it from jake. i apologize. i apologize. i don't want to get into what my future testimony or what? the testimony that i provided to the grand jury. i stand by the statements of fact that exist in this document. and i assure you that alvin bragg

will be able to provide the documentary evidence that he relied upon and he used in the drafting of this counts in the indictment involved incidents that took place including in 2017. when you were still in donald trump's circle, you would work for him for many years. can you just remind people when the relationship began to sour between you and donald trump. it was around the time of the raid on my home in april. yeah and the and the statement of fact in the indictment also talks about , um, veiled threats that he was making towards you through it through social media. and he continues to do that. i mean, donald has been very consistent using his untruth social platform. in order to make these threats. he doesn't just make them against me. he makes them against anyone that he finds to be critical of him or that he has concern of its whether it's

michael cohen whether it's alvin bragg whether it's the judge, whether it's the prosecutors, whoever it might be that he deems to be a threat to him. he uses whatever method that he has available to him in order to try to denigrate you and to harm you. the indictment also talks about you discussing with then president trump his need to repay you for $130,000 paid to stormy daniels as hush money discussion that you had in the oval office of the white house. i don't know how you felt about it then, but looking back on it. is it weird that you were having that conversation in the oval office of the white house? again we're going into conversations that may or may not have been part of the grand jury testimony or my interviews with the prosecutors at the d a s office, so i'm going to sort of step

aside from that, but yes, it would be, um, it's not the sort of thing that you would expect. to take place inside of the oval office. yeah although certainly other things have happened near the oval office. um are you concerned also true that this case could come down to who the jury finds more credible, you or donald trump? or is that comparison you welcome it was definitely a comparison. and i welcome you know, one of the things that i consistently say. i hear on all the stations, including this one. you know, we have to be concerned about michael cohen. he's a convicted perjurer. he's a convicted liar. now these are all great lines that donald trump has, uh, you know, has put out there for many people to continue to promote. what they need to do is to continue the sentence, which is the lie that i had provided to congress, which was done at the direction of in coordination

with and for the benefit of donald j. trump and if i could take it just another moment and remind your viewers what my big lie was about. it was about the number of times that i spoke to donald about the failed trump tower moscow real estate project . i was instructed to say three when, in fact, the true answer was 10. and if that's the big lie, that's going to prevent a jury from believing me in terms of, you know my credibility versus the guy who's lied to the american public over 35,000 times. that's fact checked by the way, you know, we'll see what happens. but i would put my money on cohen on this one. one of the things that's so interesting about the stormy daniels hush money payment. i'm not a big reader of in touch magazine but apparently in 2011 stormy daniels was featured on the cover of in touch magazine talking about her encounter her sexual encounter with donald trump. this is obviously years

before he announced he was running for president. uh if the fact if it was already public, why pay her money to keep it quiet? was it just because people didn't remember or didn't notice the first time it was on the cover of in touch magazine. if it's either in touch or in style, actually, i'm not. i'm not sure i don't recall that specific document or that newspaper. during that time period, there was something else that had transpired. where stormy. um there was a story about stormy daniels and donald trump in a online website called the dirty dot com that ultimately was taken down, so i'm not sure about the article that you're referring to what did you think of the indictment today? what did what did you think of the strength of the charges and the strength of the case? um given how much you have invested of your time to bring

these facts to light. well again . this is not michael cohen's case. this is an alvin brig. district attorney of new york case against the defendant, donald j. trump i was merely asked to provide information which i did i provided not only testimony provided documentary evidence, something that i said going back to when i had spoken with george stephanopoulos and said that my loyalty belongs to my wife, my daughter, my son and my country, and i believe that it's important that everyone who commits a crime be held accountable. and if those crimes were relevant enough by the southern district of new york to hold against me, then certainly it should be. it shouldn't matter that it's donald j. trump or former president or anyone. now this is up to alvin bragg and his prosecutorial team. two. provide you know the information

to again the judge and the jury at the appropriate time. in court today. trump attorney todd blanched, he defended the former president's various statements on social media, which, as you know, many people have considered to be beyond the pale in terms of the names. he's called individuals, including calling district attorney alan bragan animal, he defended them by citing your podcasts. your other interviews that you've done in the run up to the case, perhaps this interview itself will will be cited in the future. um, what's your take on that? i'm at the defendant in this case when i was the defendant in the case, donald was very quick along with his acolytes to attack me on whatever platform that they had access to it the time. this is not michael cohen is not the defendant donald, you are and so i will continue to speak truth to power. i will continue to provide transparency to the american people so that they understand to the extent that i

can information that i have and i don't care that they want to keep raising me. it's amazing how once again, donald is trying to shift all of the blame, which he's so good at. it's always somebody else's fault. yeah. michael cohen is speaking on his podcast, michael cohen wrote a book, michael cohen wrote a second book. therefore he should be allowed to turn around into say, the things that he is saying against again. the judge , the judges, family, prosecutors and so on. that's not the way the system works and obviously mr blanche should know that well, one last question for you, just having been in trump world for so long when he calls the general counsel special counsel rather jack smith when he calls him a lunatic when he calls the district attorney kevin brown district attorney alvin bragg. um an animal. when he criticizes, uh, alvin bragg

for being backed by george soros when he criticizes the judge and the judge's daughter. is this just being pugilistic. just being a fighter. is this just being attacking? or does he actually want? um his supporters to go after these people, either rhetorically or even worse. or i hate to say the combination of both, you know, he's always trying to show that he's strong. it's an appearance of strength, and he thinks by attacking people, whether it's a judge or the judge's daughter, myself or anybody that this that this gives the appearance of strength. it doesn't it actually gives the appearance of ignorance and stupidity, but nobody is able to tell him to knock it off because donald trump doesn't care what anybody says what anybody thinks he's going to continue to run the show the way he wants, which is why he has this clown car of council right now representing

him, because no legitimate firm wants to take him on because you have an out of control client that doesn't listen to any advice and at the end of the day isn't going to pay you either. so you know, this is you get you get what you pay for. i guess. one last question michael, which is donald trump, and also a lot of his supporters in congress and elsewhere are constantly talking about alvin bragg is being supported by george soros , who was a very wealthy progressive who funds a lot of progressive prosecutors clearly on the liberal end of the spectrum. george soros is also somebody that is a holocaust survivor. he's jewish and a lot of anti semites also happened to criticize george soros. i'm not saying criticizing george soros is necessarily anti semitic. it isn't. but do you think the way that donald trump and his supporters invoke george soros. his name does does that bother you? do you think they're doing

it for any anti semitic reason? i do. i think it's an anti semitic trope, and i think donald knows that and that's why he continues to do it. look we've seen we've seen donald do things like this all the time. every time that he refers, for example, to alvin bragger to fani willis or to someone who's black. he calls them an animal. i mean, this is just the way that the man behaves. um there's no again it's why he's having such a difficult time in terms of getting competent counsel because he refuses to listen to anyone. he allows his worst nature to come forward, and that's not going to help him in this case, you know, it's not just this case. he knows that there's the georgia case. the fani willis the d a case coming down the pike very soon. you have both of jack smith's case also, and this notion that well , why did alvin bragg go first? what's the difference? why all of a sudden? are we treating this like? it's a horse race

who's coming in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. didn't matter if you break the law. it's called accountability, and it goes right back to the adage that no one is above the law, and that includes donald j. trump. michael cohen. thank you so much for coming in tonight. really appreciate it. anderson jake michael cohen. fact check. uh mentioned fact, checking a moment ago in the former president's rambling appearance tonight, he repeated a whole slew of lies and as daniel dale is with us tonight with some of the fact check so, daniel, what did you hear? what did you want to talk about? anderson it was a donald trump's speech, which means it was a barrage of false claims. many of which i'm comfortable calling lies because they've been debunked repeatedly . and yet he keeps saying them things like $85 billion worth of equipment left in afghanistan when it was actually about seven billion, or that nobody had a problem with his call with georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger. until months later, no people had a problem right away that very weak and anderson i found him, particularly particularly dishonest when he tried to pivot

to the federal investigation into his handle. of official documents, listen to some of the things, he said on that subject. under the act. i'm supposed to negotiate with narrow the national archives and records administration. which, as of this date is a radical left troublemaking organization that red flags the constitution of the united states and the bill of rights as dangerous and triggering. can you imagine? this is what we have to deal with, even though that has absolutely nothing to do with openly taking boxes of documents and mostly clothing and other things to my home. which president obama has done. the bushes have done. jimmy carter's done. ronald reagan is done. everybody's done. i was working with narrow very nicely until the raid on my home. so three separate clips that replayed this is a triple whammy of nonsense. none of that is true on on the first claim that the

presidential records act said that he's supposed to negotiate with narrow over the return of documents absolutely false. that law is open and shut. clear cut . it says that the moment of president leaves office the archivist of the united states takes custody of presidential records. there was nothing in there that envisions a prolonged negotiation. the second claim that obama bush bush the bush is reagan and so on. also took documents like he did has been debunked by the national archives and records administration itself. it says that it took custody as required by that law immediately upon those presidents, leaving office and narrow itself was the entity that moved the documents to temporary narrow managed facilities. so not like their own house club resort near where their presidential libraries would be built. and then the third claim that he was working very nicely with narrow until this august. fbi search that is obvious nonsense. look. error had been trying for more than a year to get back these documents that were rightfully theirs. trump did not even return all the documents we know even after

the department of justice took over and issued him a subpoena so very nicely, i guess is debatable. but in this case it just obviously wrong. he also continued to spread the same election lies that he has talked about before the claim, he said before about millions of illegal votes. yeah. the millions of votes illegally stuffed into ballot boxes and all koran government cameras. obviously that is not true. i mean, what what more can we say about this? we've been dealing with this for two years now. it did not happen. there was a tiny smattering of fraud throughout the country that even many of trump's own former top officials , former attorney general bill barr, various campaign officials have concluded would not have changed the outcome. we have addressed this dozens, probably hundreds of times, he keeps saying it will keep saying it in perpetuity doesn't make it any more. correct daniel dale a lot more to get to we will daniel. thank q. joining the panel, now cnn political analyst new york

times senior political correspondent trump biographer maggie haberman. um first of all, maggie, i don't know if you heard the ramblings speech the president gave tonight. what did you make of that? what are your thoughts on the day? the day i actually thought when, as well as it could have gone for trump and a lot of ways because this is an indictment that did not have as a bunch of people on his team. put it to me a ton of surprises. they felt as if they were able to deal with this well, and then he gave a speech where he didn't really talk about that indictment very much at all. he did do exactly what he was warned against doing by the judge, which has talked about the prosecutor and his family and talked about the judge and his family, and i don't know how that's going to go over. it has a feeling of trump is almost daring the judge to issue a gag order, which a lot of trump supporters have been predicting defiantly would happen. trump as we know, pushes the bounds of conduct over and over again. i expect you will see that here. basically his argument is what it has been, which is any investigation into me is unjust. i was really surprised at how much time he

spent talking about the mar-a-lago boxes investigation, the documents case, which we know he is very preoccupied with and concerned about and talks about a lot. but that was much more top of mind for him tonight. katelyn polantz hearing from your sources. documents thing really stood out to me where he was talking about also saying that prosecutors or investigators are threatening people with jail time when they're trying to talk people we know jack smith, the special counsel has been moving very aggressively, very tight deadlines not just for trump attorneys, but for witnesses that they've been subpoenaing. we confirmed the other day that they have called him members of the secret service to come in and testify as well. they're basically asking anyone and everyone his comments tonight seemed to indicate just such a high level of concern when it comes to the documents investigation in a really notable way. obviously, the new york cases top of mind because that is where he was today. i think his comments about the judge will really notable given that was what his legal team was most worried about going into today was what he would say about that. and about alvin bragg. but the documents in it really stood out to you heard

anything about what happened behind the scenes at the court house in the courts building what the president thought about the process of actually being under arrest. he didn't enjoy it. anderson was generally how have had a described to me. i mean, he didn't speak to cameras and caitlin that she was there, in part because the camera had been pushed very far down the hall and i think he couldn't get close enough to it. but that was surprising that he didn't make an address ahead of time or after, because we have been expecting it. he was very angry. he was not enjoying it. there was some longer period of time leading up to him going into the courtroom while he was being processed. and i still don't know exactly what accounted for that delay, but something did happen there. and can i just say one other thing today that also happened was there's a inviting in the legal team over who is taking the lead on the new york case, and you could see it in the transcript where the prosecutors brought up joe tacopina, saying that he may have a conflict of interest when it comes to story daniels, saying they got a letter from her attorney yesterday, implying

that he denied it. i should note to the judge today. it wasn't even hearing focused on that he went out of his way to deny that comes after they brought on that new attorney that was there today, so i do think there is a lot of legal issues as well as to who is actually defending trump in the in the lead position on that situation in the former president has been fundraising on this man. i'm not sure at this point how much they have raised. i'm not sure how much more they raised today. they're now selling i guess t shirts with a fake monk shot that they have done. how do you think? politically this place for him in the coming weeks and months. listen, this wasn't a good day for donald trump. but he isn't a master of, you know, taking lemons and making lemonade. he likes the theatrics. he likes to kind of build up the branding around this we had heard, you know, there were negotiations of doing something even more potentially scaled back then what we saw today he wanted the mug shot. he wanted that imagery of the defiant leader, you know, taking on the establishment, and it's working. that's the problem is we like we're seeing it. all the polls are showing he is leading the fact that the other republicans in the field are coming out and defending him. it

is hard, you know, at this juncture in a primary season if people are not willing to challenge for example, this indictment or any of the other investigations into him what lane is there to run against him in because this is not going where he's not a substantive person? we're now you know, seven years into this endeavor. this isn't something where people vote for him purely on policy. it's the characters that the asterisk theatrics that follow him. he is. he's taking up all the oxygen in the room, and i think he's making the most of it also makes it impossible for other republican candidates to talk about actual issues. he's not looking to talk about issues, not and i mean look, look at the arc of the day. he starts off as a small guy in a small caravan, you know, with a small entourage going into a big building, and you can see on his face that it's you know, he's gone from reality tv to reality that this is real. this is not judge judy. this is a real situation and he looks shaken up. he looks ashen. but then he gets to get in a big plane and go to his big resort and have a

big event and get all this stuff and he's it. there's something about what's happening to me, that's very disturbing. that he's kind of slipped the noose even today, and it's somehow having the conversation. he wants to have a balance not to want to talk about. he's not talking about the country, not even talking about the case. he's just pulling people down to his own mirror world and i'm afraid it's going to be working. i think it's up to republicans to figure out how to get us out of the situation because this is not good. they don't know how republicans knew how to do that. i think that we would have seen it a long time ago. and i do think that that is a point that you're making. and as a point of this is making, you know, we hear a lot from people around ron desantis, for instance, that he's not changing how he's behaving based on donald trump. he's going to run his game. donald trump is doing what he's doing, and that's fine except that donald trump was carried live on fox news tonight. that doesn't happen that often anymore, and that tells you a lot about how the oxygen is getting subject and i don't think republicans no how to go with donald trump. i don't think

they have ever known how to go at donald trump. i don't think that's changed. i do think he has, in some ways tightened his hold on the party, even if his support has slipped. just say that alvin bragg made it much more difficult today to go out. donald trump. alvin bragg provided fodder for republicans to say, look, this is what's going on. this is what's happening to donald trump can point to alvin bragg and say. i'm being attacked, and it's hard for republicans to say, well, no, he's really not when, in fact when mitt romney comes out and defends donald trump, you know there's a problem. there's no space for, uh, mike pence or christian nunu or someone else who's getting in the race to say, let me put some daylight here. let me try to like separate myself. how can you do that in this in this instance when we have this case right here, this indictment, which is largely is, the poll said. based on politics and keep in mind today, nikki haley was at the border. i believe mike pompeo traveled to ukraine and those things are not breaking through. what's breaking through is the is the message is, you know, law enforcement is being weaponized against us. the system is being weaponized against americans. that's what the republican base wants to

hear. and that's what donald trump is selling them that you can't really break through on the policy stuff. substance just ahead in new york congressman daniel goldman joins us more coverage. more conversation welcomes next the end of this historic day. why did we choose safe like we wewere loading our suv when crack safafes like came righght to us, and we could see exactly when they'd arrived with the replacement. we could trust service the way we want it. say flat repair. safelite replace all need fiber for ourigestive health, but less than 10% of us getting up each daygood thing . metamucil gummies are an easy way to get prebiotic plant based fiber with the same amount of fiber as two cups of broccoli metamucil gummies easy way to get your daily fiber. if you're turning 65 soon or over 65 planning to retire now is the time to learn more about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan from united healthcare and get help protecting yourself from the out of pocket costs. medicare doesn't pay because the

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joins us from outside mar-a-lago, uh, i guess the event is over. the party's over what stood out to you? well, one thing that really stood out to me and this is i know you guys have not been watching these speeches in whole and i have been at almost every single one for the last several months. this was an incredibly short speech. he usually talks for up to two hours. so this 30 minute speech was very short. now i will say that i talked to a number of sources who have spoken with them today talk to members of his inner circle, who say that he was not pleased with what happened today, but he was encouraged watching that coverage afterwards. hearing legal pundits talking about how this was a weak case and that trump himself still believes what his lawyers are telling him, which is again. that this is a weak case, but i did speak to one ally who is here tonight who supports trump in 2024, who did raise some concerns, which is that they believe that trump might be entering an echo chamber. and that was certainly what we saw here tonight. almost everyone here was a rabid trump

supporter of the matt gates. the marjorie taylor green exists on a social media platform. true social, which is again an echo chamber. it's all people who are supporting him who are repeating his ideas, and there is a concern about what this means. politically i've talked to a number of allies and advisers who say that while they do believe that this indictment is going to give him a quick boost, its hard pressed to find someone who thinks that this actually will help him long term or has any idea so it's interesting to hear actual people close to him talking about this idea that he's entered into this echo chamber and it might not be able to come out and that could actually hurt him politically. anderson christian just in the room when the speech is actually happening tonight. does that play well in the room? it does you have a lot of people who are cheering? i think probably the loudest cheer was when he said something about how alvin bragg himself should be charged or he is the real criminal. i don't know the exact line, but we're

talking about alvin bragg. we heard a large cheer for that. there were certain notes that played well, but overall, it was a lot of going back and forth a little bit of rambling the i think it was hard to follow. if you're not well versed in all of these cases, as i know, both maggie and caitlin said he spent a lot of time on in what he called the documents hoax. we know that he is concerned about that investigations as one of the top investigations he cares about. but those kind of in the weeds details were not something that elicited the cheers. cheers came for the lobs at alvin bragg , lobs at the prosecutors. the lobs this special counsel, that's that's what actually got the cheers here in the crowd, and i do want to point out one thing that you know, one of the biggest cheers i heard all night was actually before he even spoke when i heard the crowd breakout, chanting kerry! one carry lake walked in, and that is what we really saw. here tonight. kerry lake was a celebrity murder taylor green, mike lindell, that was who was here and again. it does raise the question about this echo chamber that has been created. krista holmes. appreciate it.

thanks, jake. thanks anderson. you know one of the things one of the reasons why lawyers did not want donald trump to speak is because he has a tendency to admit things that he did that were wrong, even though he doesn't view them as wrong. one of those has to do with the special counsel investigation into his improper storage of classified documents. he falsely claimed that previous presidents have done exactly what he did, which is not true. um and he admitted some behaviors. i don't know if we have the clip ready, but in in what he calls the boxes hoax this has to do with boxes full of classified documents that were improperly brought down to mar-a-lago. that the officials in the government who needed them back difficulty getting them back, and we're not confident that donald trump would store them securely. this is part of what he had to say about that. we were negotiating and very good faith proper way

in order to return some or all of the documents that i openly and in very plain sight. i brought with me to mar-a-lago from our beautiful white house, just as virtually every other president has done in the past. again that's not accurate that virtually every president has done what he did, which is untold amounts of documents that were classified and improperly stored, jamie gangel. none of them have done it on purpose. there were some who accidentally took things. first of all the act was signed by jimmy carter just to go back, but it did not apply to him. but there is some reporting that he did find a document and he quickly returned it. it is not true for any of the others that they purposely took the i have to say i've been covering the archives story in

some depth, and i confess that i was sitting here doing call and response with him, as he said these things and shaking my head and saying no, but the reality is he just confessed, right? this wasn't a confession over and over. i openly and in very plain sight. jack smith or someone who works for him. is like it's not just i mean the documents thing was the part. he seemed to be really eager to confess that particular part of it that he took the documents, but it's not just that the entire speech was really about all of the legal jeopardy that he's in reminding voters for whatever reason that this is a former president. who has four active criminal investigations into his conduct. there has never been a president who has had this much of his conduct the scope of his conduct under so

much legal criminal scrutiny, and he just went to mar-a-lago to remind millions of americans that that's the case and this is why it's going to be an issue for him. alvin bragg case is going to be adjudicated. maybe it's strong or maybe it's not. but the american voters are going to have to decide whether that what they saw in mar-a-lago , a former president, who has all this conduct under scrutiny , whether that is acceptable to them, and he wants voters to basically say, just ignore it all. it's all corrupt. it's all political. and the echo chamber as kristen was saying in that room might believe that, but that's a really hard sell for the american public, and that's why this is going to be really problematic. there are so many reasons why listening to donald trump and having to fact jack is daniel dale did and as we will have to continue to do, probably for days to come. so many of the things he said is a challenge months to come for months to

come, like talking about stuffing ballot boxes, of course, still trying to relitigate 2020, which there was absolutely no proof of, and there are many, many more things. but if there is one, um nugget of sort of it interest for all of us. and that is to listen to him. you really get a window into what he's most worried about? yeah the fact that he talked about not just all of these, but specifically, it seemed to talk the most about the boxes. yeah about and about jack smith, the special counsel , and this is happening as he is very well aware that the investigation is not. really focused. it doesn't seem right now on taking the boxes it is on him. potentially obstructing in an active way, the return classified documents that he took, so let's remember where we

are. in that case. just two weeks ago, the government went before a federal judge and convince the judge proffered evidence to prove prima fascia case that donald trump engaged in with his trying to use his lawyer to conceal or commit a crime, and that level of proof enabled the prosecutors to pierce his attorney client privilege. the next day that attorney kevin corcoran was in front of the grand jury, testifying against his client that he represents him because the question is donald trump's attorneys made false representation to the government to the justice department. and the question is where they knowingly lying or had donald trump lied to them. and so that's at the core of this obstruction of justice investigation. so now let's think about the comments he made tonight. in a wiest case, saying , i openly and admittedly took the documents from the white house to mar-a-lago. he's basically laid the groundwork for crimes that we know they're looking at from the search

warrant in the affidavit supporting the search warrant last summer, we know they're looking at unlawful retention of classified. we also know they're looking at the n s espionage act , which is unlawful retention of mentioned national defense material. so it goes to that, but it also goes to the question of intent. right i took this material. i engaged in a negotiation with nora and i agreed to give some back but i kept others. all that goes to the intent to obstruct this effort to return, the documents were having a logical fact based conversation. about donald trump , which is dangerous. um andy's right, dennis, right. abby's right. jamie's right. it's not this but but politically politically, we keep calling an echo chamber. it's a parallel universe. mike lindell, who still to this day says you know hugo chavez from the grave, somehow manipulated voting machines and stole the election from donald trump. right. okay, the fact you have to say those things about explaining the people he's in the room with tells you something, but but the strategy here for trump is

pretty simple. keep the 35% he's got who believe it when he says it's a witch hunt the deep state they're out to get me and he needs to keep them there because that's his 35% most smart republicans think he'll get into the mid forties among republicans rally around trump moment right now, above this if he can stay there. and you have three or four other candidates in the race. he's got that he may well be the next republican nominee. that doesn't mean he's the next president of states. if we take this one step at a time, he's stronger politically today in the republican cocoon because he keeps his core. believing his lies and also so few republicans are willing to say what they really think about him and these charges coming up next new york democratic congressman and former impeachment counsel dan goldman as our special coverage continues, stay with us. good morning, everyone we do begin with breaking news this morningg . i want to give you a sense of what it looks like to you and your team on the ground pressing

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the things that i love to do. i hope when i retire someday they say that guy made this place a special place to come to school and gave as much as he could to help the community. tomorrow history in the making beginning today, bringing you the news, disturbing new details. new way a lot of questions plus buy nowy

overtime with a firm bird .com. solomon in new york. and this is cnn. and welcome back to our continuing coverage of the indictment of donald trump, who joined now by congressman dan goldman from new york. congressman appreciate you being with us hearing the former president at mar-a-lago tonight after being told by the judge today, or the judge, telling attorneys on both sides, the

defense and the prosecution, please refrain from making comments or tell it to telling the judge telling the attorneys to tell the witness donald trump and their client donald trump, and the witnesses michael cohen and others. please refrain from making comments or engaging in conduct that has the potential to incite violence, create civil unrest or jeopardize the safety of well being of any individuals . hearing the former president once again go after the judge. his wife and his daughter is that in violation of the judge's instructions already look, i think he's starting to get up against that line in. not necessarily if you read the if you were to read it on a transcript, but because we know what his threats have done in the past, and we know that his followers have used violence when he has made similar statements, so in the context of what he's saying, yes, he needs to be very careful. i will. i would expect the judge to continue to admonish him. if it goes any further, uh rather than

just to call out the judge's daughter or the d a s wife. i do think that the judge will admonish him and perhaps begin the process of moving towards a gag order. we know the president faced 34 counts of falsifying business records. that's only a felony of the records were falsified with the intent of concealing another crime. some legal analysts have expressed surprise that the indictment fails to identify what that concealed crime is. do you see that as problematic? no, i think in the end it will be pretty clear. if nothing else, the defense will ask for a bill of particulars to specified zach tli. what the crimes are that they are that they are charging , um, mr bragg said himself that it's state election law and federal election law. uh and i think ultimately that's not going to be an issue. as this case moves forward, very well made lead to a motion to dismiss. um because of the legal

theory that they are charging, but not because they don't specify the specific felony statutory number as someone who's involved prosecuting the impeachment of the of the press, then president and as a congress sitting congressman now representing new york city, downtown new york what did you make of seeing donald trump? driving through your district heading toward his court appearance. it was surreal. it's obviously historic and unprecedented to have a former president charged in an indictment when you read the indictment and says the people versus donald j. trump that's pretty stark, and it appeared as if he understood the gravity of that when he was in the courthouse. i think what's most important here anderson is that the courthouses where this has to play out donald trump has a number of constitutional rights . he can challenge the indictment. he can challenge the

witnesses, he can go to trial where 12 jurors have to convict him unanimously beyond a reasonable doubt. that's where this has to play out and where we get off into dangerous territory is when this turns into a political football, so to speak, and that donald trump is using this, uh, this charge using the court of public opinion to inside a lot of either violence or threats or concern. that the rule of law in our country is made for this. he will have an opportunity to defend himself, and that's where this should happen. bragg has obviously official questions over the timing of these charges . the strength of the evidence trying to play for our viewers something he said today. we have had available to the office additional evidence that was not in the office's possession prior to my time here, text messages, emails, contemporary. his phone

records multiple witnesses. all of that will be as you saw in the fall born out in a public courtroom in downtown manhattan . do you think the public will have to wait until the trial to find out what that evidence is? um a lot of it. yes the certainly the defense and donald trump will see it. it may leak out somehow, but it will not be made public until the trial. but you you captured. i think two of the clips that really jumped out to me. the first is that this is not just based on michael cohen's testimony. there are text messages and documents and mr cohen said that earlier on your show that are going to corroborate michael cohen. but notably, that's a lot of that material is new, and i think what we lose, uh, sight of here is that the trump organization forced the prosecution the district attorney's office to go to trial in tax and other fraud related charges when prosecutors prepare for trial. they dig in

much deeper. and i think i suspect that some of this new evidence that became available to the district attorney probably related to that trial that trump organization as is their right, uh, forced the district attorney to prepare for and i'm not saying that they shouldn't have done it. they did it. they were convicted very swiftly. they will have to pay a fine but it kept this investigation into the trump organization into donald trump not only alive, but even, you know, burning and i don't that was something that jumped out to me that mr bragg said today is that they had new evidence from when he took over as district attorney separating from the legal issues. do you think this helps the former president? politically maybe not in a general election, but in the republican primary. it remains

to be seen. clearly it has helped him now in this short term, but we're long way away from the primary season. there may be further indictments. there may be more information that comes out of this, you know. ultimately donald trump is a criminal defendant right now, and he may be able to capitalize in this moment. but as that sets in, will have to see how how it impacts the race. mitt romney, who voted to convict mr trump during both impeachment in trials and who's been a consistently harsh critic of the former president said today quote the new york prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda. does it concern you that mitt romney views this as political well, it concerns me when anyone says this is political, i think what's donald trump mentioned in his speech tonight that alvin bragg declined to prosecute a different fraud case a year ago that was strongly recommended to him by senior prosecutors. and

at the time donald trump's lawyer lauded alvin brags adherence to the rule of law. now he charges him and all of a sudden he's a partisan hack. you can't have it both ways, and there is no evidence at all. that this was political in nature, notwithstanding all of the allegations from the right there's nothing to support that other than it's their preferred political narrative, so i think we need to be very careful when people are throwing those terms around, especially with someone who has demonstrated that he is willing to decline to prosecute this very same defendant. congressman goldman. i appreciate your time. thank you. thank you, anderson. we should know. we asked each and every republican member of the house judiciary committee to come on the program tonight. none was available back with us, our political and legal team. um what happens tomorrow? it's a good question. there will be a lot of questions about what trump said about the judge tonight. i think in his attacks on the judge there, i mean,

saying that he was this trump hating judge with a trumpeting wife is specifically targeting him really stood out, obviously , because that was something that the judge had specifically just talked about going after members of the district attorney's office that concerns they had all the district attorney's office. they have a tab on the page, it said to meet our team. it was removed earlier this week. i think because of all the threats that you had seen all the targets they were going after them. i think that's a big part of it. but also just think it's the other investigations that are also facing trump. that's notable with this case. it's expected to take time. i mean, they're not just have another court date until december. the even trump's attorneys today we're previewing a trial may not happen until next spring. i mean, do we have any sense of the timeline of these? obviously it's an unknowable at this point, but the timeline and these other investigations potential indictments. we don't have any way to know that, but we do have indicators. first of all. in georgia. their grand jury start every two months. one started in march. that one's clearly by gone by now, but another one starts in may, and all indications are that bonnie willis is getting towards the

end of her case. now, if we look at doj, you know donald trump just made a series of false claims about jack smith and his investigation, he said. jack smith is out there threatening people with prison. if they don't cooperate. that's not what's happening. jack smith is going after people with lawful subpoenas. they're claiming executive privilege, and jack smith is cleaning their clocks in court. jack smith is winning these executive privilege at the federal district court of appeal federal district court level at the federal court of appeals level just today. he wanted the court of appeals level with respect to mark meadows and various other close aides, so jack smith is playing hard and playing clean here, so and i think donald trump did himself a disservice in his speech because he reminded us that he has way bigger problems ahead for all the i think, legitimate and valid critiques we've made of this case from the manhattan d a. the others are far more serious. and i think far better supported by the evidence. except that speech was for republicans. that speech really was about him, galvanizing his supporters and galvanizing non supporters. republicans who don't like him who have still

been critical of the bragg investigation in the hopes that it will take the vision to me that that is his idea at this stage in life of a galvanizing rallying speeches, surprising want to join the barricades because he's fighting for us? this is it was all about the details of his obsessional cases . that is a big difference from 2016. i mean, it's not i don't i don't think he was not solipsistic in 2016. he certainly was, but he was much better at suggesting to people in his rally addresses. you know here's problems in the country and i'm fighting for you on them. now it's here's my problems, you know. come help me with them and that said he doesn't you know this? we've talked about this many times before. he's not somebody who thinks and really long term strategy. he thinks in terms of quick survival, and i think that's just what he's looking at this right now. does he has he lost that? i mean, is it just being in an echo chamber for so long being on the golf field too long, and we're just being the swamp of mar-a-lago david or

realistic in terms of being able to connect with that 16 base being able to take it from from, you know, here's here's what happened to me. but also this is , you know, i'm the guy fighting for you. maggie is correct. and van pointed us earlier. you know, in 16. it was about everyone else's grievances. and then somewhere along the way became about you know his grievances and along that way, he's kind of lost followers, right. he became a it was a general election candidate became much stronger. um you know, primary election candidate and so it will be it. this is primary gonna be all about is how he can differentiate himself and how others can differentiate themselves from this. this ongoing um, uh, even service grievance fast about the current president, right? i mean, you said, how do people campaign what are they gonna camp? painting tomorrow. if you're if you're ron desantis, who doesn't want to mention donald trump and your campaigns when you go out and people ask you about it? what's your response? you know you have to. you have to speak about it. but i would go further and to state the obvious. maybe 2016 was a bit of a fluke. like

i don't know that there's some secret magic that he's had since then. sure, he has a lock solid hold on about 30% of the republican base, and nobody else can become the nominee so long as he keeps about that percentage of the base just due to the primary system, but he's not one something nationally since then, so i'm not sure that there was 70, you know 75 million plus people that voted for him, so i went to minimize that it's minimize that or diminish that at all right? i mean, there is a movement right. there is a movement still really supports this guy, and it can't be overlooked the different different movement, though healthy one tries to get new people it tries to get converts. it tries to grow. what happens with movements is sometimes they start to curdle and then start looking instead of for converts . they start looking for apostates. start looking for people to throw out into to demonize. and so i think he's in real danger. i think it's trouble here. trouble here. another thing is if somebody does something the hurt. a member of the family of any of these people. we're going to

test that theory that you could shoot somebody and i wouldn't lose any support. he is being incredibly reckless. uh i agree with you. it's completely irresponsible for him to continue to put the pictures up of family members of judges and prosecutors. that is not done and he's playing with fire. so not only is this movement starting to feel like it's really curdling. i don't think he expanded his base tonight. he just consolidated this curdled milk, and now he's also encouraging people to possibly do things that are and violent. we could be in a very, very different moment for this president very soon, but expressing very soon after that. i think we have to remember as many of us have been saying for weeks that this was the weakest of the cases that he's facing. and of course, now he is indicted. you can't diminish the facts of the case. but in three weeks he's going to be appearing in new york for a civil suit with eugene carroll related to defamation in a sexual allegation, so there's the looming doj investigations. it's a rape case as well as fulton county, all of which i think most observers think have more serious implications for him, so

the legal woes are not buying. he means over for him, but i think we saw tonight how he's going to attempt to spin the narrative and capitalizing his favor. in the problem with that many of us were worried about with this case coming first is, it makes it that much easier for him to tell his base. these other cases, it's the same thing . it's a witch hunt. once again. it's a liberal prosecutor. it's somebody coming after me. i think it's unfortunate because there's a lot more steam and facts that are important behind those other cases. the other thing too, is we have talked about. i just i'm picking up and i think a lot of what you said is what i have heard from. a bunch of folks. about how they feel about this case. a lot of folks have used the word week to talk about this case. and what i think they really mean is trivial, because i think we don't actually know what the evidence is. i mean, what was interesting reading the statement of facts is yes. it relies very heavily on michael cohen, especially for two specific issues. but it also relies on david pecker, who was the head of ami with the head of the head of the national enquirer. there was a detail in this statement of fact that i had not known before, which was

that david pecker apparently was brought to the white house to sit with trump and trump thanked him for help during the campaign, and so i think in terms of certainly the implications not just for trump, but for the country in terms of the types of investigations, this one feels more trivial, but it's still a criminal case, assuming the judge allows it to go forward. also speaking of the campaign and what that platform is, i don't know of any other major campaign events he has coming up. he just did that rally in waco, texas. he's got something coming up in new hampshire there, but nothing no massive rallies that i have seen any notices go out about or anything like that. he's got something coming up. i think in iowa is what i was told to hampshire is, yeah, i think that he's got some early state travel, but i think you're right. i don't think they're planning on doing big rallies, whether it is because of not being able to get the same crowds or because of money or because of what have you but i think that that is not how they're approaching this campaign right now, and it's almost you saw tonight how much he needs that he needs that energy from people applauding him, and if he doesn't have it, he looks for it elsewhere. if you're just joining us, this is

a special cnn coverage the first former president ever to face criminal charges, returns home and vents. advance advance. we're at the beginning of a new chapter for donald trump and the end of an historic day, a day that saw mr trump arraigned in a manhattan courtroom on charges that are experts have been saying or not as clear cut and as a successful prosecutor might hope for, at least as far as we can tell from the court documents that we have as of now. tonight the former president returned to mar-a-lago to a campaign style rally where, as we've been discussing, he lashed out at prosecutor alvin bragg judge the judge's wife and the judge's daughter. and now this massive election interference at a scale never seen before in our country. beginning with the radical left . george soros backed prosecutor alvin bragg of new york. who campaigned on the fact that he would get. president trump. i gotta get him. i'm going to get him. i have a trump hating judge with the trump hating wife and family. whose daughter worked

for kamala harris and now receives money from the biden harris campaign and a lot of it. we recently had another trial and the same judge told the fine man who worked for me for many, many years. that if you admit your guilt you will be in jail for 90 days. but if you don't. if we go through a trial, and you're found guilty, you're going away for 10 years and maybe longer. which for 75 year old man with a great family. really means life. again consider the judge's instructions in the case here and i'm quoting now, please refrain from making comments or engaging in conduct that has the potential to incite violence, create civil unrest or jeopardize the safety or well being of any individuals. and in just a moment, former manhattan d. a cy vance joins us first cnn senior justice correspondent evan perez is here. i mean, you've been following all the

legal back and forth in this case. certainly the classified documents case what stood out to you about today. well, anderson , i think like you, you know, we were certainly expecting a lot more of a narrative from the prosecutors and the district attorney there of the legal theory of this case, and what we don't have is exactly how they're tying it to a second crime, which makes it a felony, and you know one of the things that we were watching, of course when the district attorney was speaking later after the court had wrapped up was he made reference to a possible tax tax crime. ah possibly under new york state tax law. now that's what we're going to be watching for in the coming weeks when the district attorney has to present more of the evidence for this case, they point out, for instance, you know they cross the issue of intent for donald trump by saying that he personally signed these checks right, so they at least they

established that they believe they have evidence that donald trump intended to violate these laws. the question is, you know , how does this cross into a felony and again? that's where what? we are surprised, frankly , that we didn't see more of that in the statement of facts or anything that the district attorney presented today. i'm wondering if you're hearing from any sources within the justice department about their reaction to the indictment today. i think like that, like us, anderson. i think there was a lot of consternation that there wasn't more here to be seen again. they are not privy to the evidence that the district attorney has certainly you know, for the president presentation of this case, a lot of this stuff, of course, is what you know. federal prosecutors in new york had looked at anderson. they had chosen not to bring a case against donald trump. based on many of the things that you saw today, it is possible that again . alvin bragg has facts that violate that. that show a violation of state law that, of

course, the feds would not have looked at so again. they're not privy to everything here, but they are. they're like us. i think a little bit underwhelmed by the facts they saw presented. appreciate it. thanks, jake. thanks anderson joining us now? district attorney alan brags predecessor, cy vance was manhattan district attorney when the initial probe into donald trump began, mr vance, thanks so much for joining us, um what do you think of the case you saw outlined today would you have brought based on your knowledge of the case based on your knowledge and reading of the indictment? would you have brought this to trial? well, jake, i don't want to, uh. put myself in the shoes without the full information that the current district attorney has. i've read the statement of facts , and i think the statement of facts was really quite detailed. ah and provided information that

i think is going to be very relevant to the question of whether or not the d a s case can be proved. we made a decision in our office to move on to a financial crimes investigation. after we had initially looked at the hush money payment because the federal government asked us to stand down in our hush money hush money payment inquiry because they were they were handling the case with michael cohen and as i said, before, i was surprised when then the southern district, an office that i have enormous respect for uh, stop the case, and it didn't go anywhere. and at that time, therefore we had moved on to financial crimes investigations , which led us to the supreme court twice and to the discovery of president trump's tax returns and ultimately to the indictment of his company and his cfo. so we were involved in many of the significant chapters that lead up today, but we did not charge

. we did not make a decision to charge the former president on hush money payments, and i think the question jake is not so much why didn't we bring the charge? but why is district attorney brag bringing the charge and i think what his attempt today to lay out the facts is. he was answering that question when he said that there was new evidence, because, obviously, as you know, he declined to bring this case about a year ago, but now he's bringing it forward. and he went asked why why he changed his mind, he said. there is new evidence. obviously what was released today is not the documentation is not the evidence itself. but did you see anything in the indictment or the statements of fact that would suggest any new evidence that you did not know about when you were district attorney? well jake, i think there are factual allegations that at least myself personally, i cannot recall that we were aware of. i think, for example, miss habermann was

talking about the meeting at the white house with the head of the media group. i can't recall whether or not that was in front of me back in 2017. so there's no doubt that district attorney bragg has has dug deep. believes in this case and you know you and i think we, uh, need to have confidence that he has done the work necessary to bring this case forward. and so i. my answer is we now have to wait and see without getting into political hysteria as we do outside the courtroom. what do you make of the legal theory, which i do not believe has been put to test in new york. maybe i'm wrong. correct me. if i am, please, that the idea that these these business the business fraudulence is misdemeanors, but because it was done allegedly in the act of hiding other crimes.

presumably campaign finance crimes. although district attorney bragg was not clear about what the other crime was, but that makes these 34 felonies instead of 34 counts of misdemeanors. first of all, jake number one. we used the false business records statute regularly during my time is just attorney. it is, as someone has said on this show earlier bread and butter charging decision by the da's office during my time as district attorney. we also elevated the false business record. charges two felonies. particularly in cases that we had brought against foreign banks who were hiding the source of their funding to move through the financial system that it was coming from sanctioned countries or entities and that we did use that, in some cases to elevate the misdemeanor to felony, but those those those were never tested by the you know, by the

defense counsel or by the defendants in those cases, uh, they were simply not tested, so it is an area of law. that has not been fleshed out in new york . we never did a case involving where the object crime was an election law violation election law violations are quite specific. you know, they're quite technical, so i do think that the first run of the defense will be to attack the legal basis for the charges in the hopes that they can knock the felony counts out and leave. the case with the mist with a series of misdemeanor counts, which they will consider victory both legally and would be considered a victory politically. what is your reaction to donald trump this evening attacking the district attorney attacking the judge attacking the judge's wife attacking the judge's daughter. what do you think of all that? donald trump has in his mind a

game plan. which i think is completely unrelated to what happens in court. i think he's looking to how he advances his political stature such that he becomes the presumptive nominee and as a nominee, it would be much more difficult for prosecutor to then. go to trial and convict him, um so that's what i think it is, is in his mind where i counsel to the former president. in an answer to your question, i think what he is saying is very, very ill advised and repugnant and wrong. i think there is no place in this case for him to make the ad hominum and personal account personal attacks against the judge, the d a or family members , and i think it's also legally risky. as i've said before, there's a statue called obstruction of governmental administration in new york

statutes. and it is essentially impairing the operation of the functioning of government by threat or intimidation, and i think the president is drawing very close to the line where he could be at risk of being charged with those offenses and the significance of that, if that were to happen in a superseding indictment is it could turn a perception. perceptually week indictment on technical violations of election law into something a jury would understand and be much more concerned about an l of elevate the strength of the overall indictment against the president . so if i were his lawyers, i would tell them knock it off. i'm probably have. i don't know that he would listen to them, donald trump said in a post on social media that quote the hearing was shocking to many in that they had no surprises and therefore no case isn't in

raymond hearing such as this where you would expect to find surprises related to the case. were you taken aback by what you saw today? in the sense that were you expecting more? than what we saw. no i wasn't expecting more. but i was very gratified, jake. uh by something. i also didn't necessarily expected that we all should be grateful for which is that the proceedings in court went off. without violence. only professionally and i think that's the result of great work by the nypd. the federal law enforcement, the d. a s office and the court system. i think what we should all take, uh, solace today. and looking. how looking at how this. potentially very dramatic, potentially very dangerous. situation that was predicted to be a situation that might attract violence ended up

being handled by the judge very professionally, and i think the judge set the tone. for what is expected from the party's going forward, so i'm encouraged by that the politics outside the courtroom, i think will continue to be very divided and very passionate. but as a country we've been here before with presidents. president clinton was under investigation by ken starr for five years. and the republicans in that in that mirror image of this investigation felt very justified and looking at president clinton for sexual. dalliance is he had in, you know , in his personal life. today we have the reverse situation where the republicans are outraged that it's being investigated at all. so politics is going needs to be addressed by the parties,

but the judge needs to control the courtroom. the judge set the next in person hearing for december. 4th it's april right now. what happens between now and december 4th? what are the next steps in this case? well since the amendment of the discovery laws in new york state in january, 2020 there is a whole new requirement that the prosecution essentially turn over to defense virtually every document that there's upon the investigation of this case and that that's that. that statute changed during the time that i was just attorney. it imposes a huge burden on the d a s office. but the good news is or at least from my perspective is we were already prepared when i was just an attorney. when we indicted the trump organization and the chief financial officer, all that information as was managed to be turned over to the defense in an organized way. in an earlier case, the one i just

described, and i'm confident that district attorney bragg and his team are going to be able to right away moved to get the documents to the defense that's obligated, and that will be the first thing i think that happens. then there will be as i said earlier. i think it attack on the legal sufficiency of the indictment and you know and on we go there's and then, of course, the lawyers are doing supplemental investigation and trying to prepare their case and the witnesses, ultimately for how this is going to be played out in court. alright former district attorney cyrus vance. thank you so much really appreciate your time. jake thank you very much. now with the panel joining us this hour is cnn senior political analyst gloria borger. gloria what's your reaction to what happened today and then the strength of this case? well i think earlier on in the day, as donald trump himself, said in his speech tonight that the reaction to this indictment was muted in the

legal community, to say the least. and then this evening, so he goes into this evening at mar-a-lago. with a little bit of wind. it is back. and what does he do? he turns it upside down. he just took the momentum. i think he may have had and blew it with this speech that he gave , which was not about how he had been vindicated. or you know how this indictment was wrong, which he talked about a little bit, but instead he goes to russia, russia, russia ukraine impeachment hoax number one impeachment hoax number two the illegal rate on mar-a-lago, the fbi and the and the doj, relentlessly pursuing republicans and on and on a litany that lots of the american public is sort of turned off on the you know the rigged election, etcetera, etcetera. so he had a little sympathy today, i think and then i think he just flipped it, not to mention attacking the judge and

attacking the d. ah and he had been warned against it, and i think if i were his attorney, i would be telling him not to do that. and if i were jack smith, a happy he talked about the boxes as jamie was saying earlier, he effectively confessed to moving boxes and that's something that i think to jack smith is going to be interested in, you know, um john king, one of the things that's interesting about this case. according to polling, at least the last polling i saw most americans were supportive of the indictment. even before we knew what was in it. i mean, the reporting was accurate in terms of what we speculated was going to be in it. um but also a majority of americans thought it was political. and it's interesting because that doesn't necessarily mean something pejorative, and i was thinking about the house oversight committee's investigation into hunter biden, which is which possibly is going to turn up. some malfeasance by hunter. biden i it wouldn't surprise me.

i think it's a political investigation. that doesn't necessarily mean that they're not going to find anything right . the hunter. there is perfectly legitimate oversight of hunter, biden and biden families enterprises in what we call the swamp here in d. c. the question is, do you overdo it? former age former d a. vance just mentioned bill clinton. bill clinton actually benefited benefited politically from being impeached , which is embarrassing, and it's not a good thing being indicted is not a good thing. can donald trump benefit politically like bill clinton benefited politically from something bad? i think it's the question before us and it was. it was a great interview in the sense that we're also sitting here wondering why is this process going to take so long? and he laid out the new york state law and he laid out the documents so but you just talked about how the politics of this the hunter biden investigation is could be in many ways legitimate but also has a heap load of politics on it. the case against donald trump read the statement of facts, read the indictment. legitimate inquiry into bad business practices cheating if you will hiding the

hush money payments. how do you can you prove your case august 8th is the next court hearing republican debate. i think, 10 days from that, roughly that point in august, is the first republican primary debate just after that hearing. in person hearing on december 4th of the people of iowa kick off the actual voting. what in early february, right, so two months from that this case, as now scheduled is going to track the american political system, and it starts with the primary system and ken donald trump. you know? can he keep his hold? can he can he can right now. he's the republican frontrunner. can you keep that? so you're talking about legitimate legal cases. political debate there on a parallel course, and they're not going to be separated. and donald trump might be might be happy for that. because this this prosecution seems to help him politically with republicans . and this is a person donald trump, who doesn't really plan beyond what is directly in front of him. he tries to attack what's right in front of him. in this case, it's ron desantis, who is his next closest

potential competitor, and that's what he's thinking about right now. he's oriented his campaign around that, and you saw that tonight. he's not really thinking about the long term implications, which i don't think it's a stretch to say are bad. it is bad to be indicted, and it's certainly bad to be indicted on these kinds of accusations. because i think you know, maybe you a lot of voters maybe may not know. do they think it was illegal? did they think it was bad, but some of these details are kind of bad. i mean, you were talking to sigh vance about, um, the david pecker of it all, and he it was notable to me. but he said that might have been new. he doesn't doesn't recall that evidence being a part of what he was in charge of what that evidence says, is that trump basically called the tabloid guy to the white house and said, thank you for helping me in the campaign. i mean, those types of allegations which are here in the you know the statement of facts and the documents if people care to look at it, the

details in here are not good, and it will be a while before we find out through the legal process, whether they were criminal, but that does not help trump. there are some interesting details in this statement of facts. i thought in paragraph 19 where he talks about, um, the defendant instructed lawyer a asked if they could delay the payment until after the election. they could avoid paying altogether because at that point that would not matter if the story became public that goes directly to the defense of oh, i didn't i didn't pay to suppress this story because i was trying to affect the campaign. i did it because i was trying to protect my wife and family. well, this piece of evidence was specifically designed to counter that. there's another piece in here where it talks about the same thing, by the way, in in paragraph 12 about the karen macdougal charges. trump did not want the information become public because he was concerned about the effect that could have on his candidacy. that's right. that's right. both both women. there's another interesting one here where he's talking about

how lawyer a who we know to be. michael cohen is working with the trump organization cfo who is on weisberg, and they're calculating out the reimbursement amount that cohen will receive. and at the end, it says the cfo memorializes calculations and a handwritten notes on the copy of the bank statement that lawyer a had provided i would guess fairly confidently that has now provided that those handwritten notes to the prosecutor, so there are interesting things in here coming up next. another daniel dale fact check on donald trump's speech this evening. also reaction on capitol hill to what trump said tonight and the charges he is now facing and later with the polls are saying about indicting a former president. you need to deliver new apps fast using the services you want in the clouds of your choice with flexible multi cloud services that enable digital innovation and enterprise control. vm ware helps you innovate and grow. meet

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refunds. i am so value yes, the show off who spoiled notes hart's concert. built improved, i think. quite a remarkable man. chevalier, master of the sword. maestro over the boat. wonderful. tacular. you take the stage. i will take everything from me. not everything is about you people. chevalier told true story, 13 when you're the leader, disaster, cleanup and restoration, how do you make like it never even happened happened. fire it up, randy. being prepared for anything. whatever comes your way, there's a pro for that serve pro like it

never even happened. breed of hornets sweeping the nation. are you picking this up? country by swarm the all new dodge hornet. our special coverage continues the former president's response to truly historic day the first ever former president criminally indicted earlier, we referenced to what voters told cnn recent poll conducted before today's events about the decision to indict the former president. want to dig in with dig in on those numbers, and political director david chalian joins us. anderson our new cnn poll taken in the immediate aftermath of that historic indictment of donald trump shows majority approval for that indictment. 60% of americans in this poll approve of the indictment 40% disapproved. take a look at this party. anderson. you see 94% of democrats approved probably not terribly surprising. but 62% of

independence, those critical voters in the middle approve of the indictment. we also asked if people thought donald trump's behavior was illegal or unethical. take a look at this, anderson 37% say. his behavior was illegal in the stormy daniels matter, 33% say, unethical, not illegal. add that up. that's 70% overwhelmingly. people think donald trump was up to no good here. in fact, only 10% say the former president did nothing wrong at all. anderson and you know, one of his biggest talking points is that this is a political prosecution. well, guess what. the american people see politics at play here. 76% 3. quarters of those in the polls say politics is at play, including 52% a slim majority of americans say that it plays a major role in this case, so that's an opening for donald trump to continue that line of attack. you also might ask anderson does this change people's opinion of donald trump at all? look at his favorability

rating now 34% favorable 58% unfavorable. in january. it was roughly the same. it's largely unchanged. and if you look at that party 72% of republicans have a favorable view of him, but only 26% of independence. anderson this is a huge warning sign as donald trump continues his 2024 campaign. david jordan. fascinating numbers. thank you joining our panel, cnn's audie cornish and david axelrod, senior political commentator, former senior adviser to president obama. david axelrod. if you are a republican watching that and or an independent and care about the republican party, and it's ability to win the white house. what do you take away from those numbers? those numbers that we just heard? listen i don't think donald trump cares about any other column right now. but the republican column and he's got a 72% approval rating among republicans. despite all this, and he's just trying to right now he's trying to win the republican nomination, and he thinks that he can turn lemons

into lemonade through this indictment that he can, in fact invigorate his base and that his base is large enough that he can survive now. it doesn't help when you, uh, make a speech like he did tonight, and you look like the guy in a bar stool who's telling you about his bad divorce, which is exactly what it felt like. i don't think he helped himself in the and, you know ah, he did miss an opportunity tonight, i think, but, um you know these numbers should be more worrisome to other republicans, because what it means is if donald trump gets elected nominated, he almost certainly will not get elected, but to his base. i don't think they care. i'm not sure they believe it. and that's what he's counting on just thinking of what other republican candidates who are already running and those who are thinking about getting in our thinking watching the former president in his rambling remarks tonight, and yet, realizing he is the person to beat in the republican party. i mean, there's silence is

deafening for sure if they wanted to jump into the breach and say something. they're not exactly doing that. and it's interesting because the definition of insanity etcetera , etcetera, and we're all doing the same thing over and over again, which is opening up the microphone and expecting him to say something different, which, of course, he did not word for word. we heard the same. and at this point what we know to be lies, because what we have learned about what he knew about his election, for example, um is very clear at this point. so i think people can hold two things in their minds at once, which is what we see in those numbers. they can think he did something wrong, possibly illegal, they can be hardened in their stance about whether they like him and are okay with that or not. and the question is, can they be okay with it for the long run month after month after month of being in this investigation in these suits while you're in the middle of a campaign and david when there are other indictments, very likely. that is the unknown. what is the compilation of all these? things do to him, but you talk about the silent republicans. they're

silent because of that 72% number and they're frightened of the base and donald trump. you know his whole political project and you guys work for him. you know, this has been predicated from the beginning on the notion that there is that the system is corrupt, that it's rigged against everyday people. and he's the avenging angel. and now he's associating these indictments with that same corrupt system, and he's trying to tell his base. you know if you side uh, you know, if you i'm fighting them, they're trying to silence you. and he's saying the other republican politicians. if you if you walk on me now, you're gonna be siding with the evil empire here , so it's you know, he's in fact, i just want to jump in there also not offering their own voters a choice. it is not a real choice. if essentially what you're saying is, of course, the system is corrupt. everything he's saying is, oh, it's kind of true and also vote for me. why vote for that person? i see not a single reason. can have the real thing in donald trump, who will air those were calling them

grievances over and over again when in many cases they are lies , right when we're able to fact check them, not always on the fly, but i don't think that it's um i think we're letting people off too easy by saying you want to be president of the united explain, obviously, obviously, but i'm just saying, like the idea that you kind of can't say anything because he's too popular. well someone's got to make the effort to hutchinson. we talked about him earlier. we'll see where he goes. goes, but he's making a bet. and that bet is you can go a different way. and you can say no. the system isn't the system isn't corrupt. uh and, uh, you know, the things that donald trump has done or not things that we should defend, and we need to go in a different direction. we'll see if that has any. uh you know whether he is the person to do it and whether that has any take off. somebody's gotta go with it. somebody actually has to believe something. and be willing to be wrong. be willing to get beat up and be there. when the thing breaks. i think what happens is people follow. follow follow, follow, and then

when there's actually a breaking opportunity, there's nobody over there. and so i do that. i don't know if it's a so i don't know who it is. but somebody in that party's got to believe something and stand for it. and i think the challenges of being that a lot of the other republican candidates calculation is they're just going to wait out an indictment that sticks. they're hoping that there will be something that weakens him enough that then that's going to open the door for them, but what they're not doing is offering con. contrast so today as i mentioned nikki haley smart that she's at the border. that's something that plays well in republican primary politics. but that's not enough of a juxtaposition. you've still got a significant portion of republicans who want to see something other than donald trump. and they want someone to offer that. but again, they're a little bit of waiting for godot element to that. they're very much in what i was saying about the definition of insanity. i think the party has seen enough times that you cannot wait for the mysterious big investigation that this time will make a difference. a certainly after january 6th exactly come to your point, then. into david's point. you look at the base, the base says. we don't care if trump wins the general election or

not. he's our candidate. we're going to vote for him. he's going to be our guy throughout. they're gonna ride or die. trumpers are going to put them in the nomination, and so there's nobody else to aspect of it. but people say how big is that base? that's the question that certain they don't they don't care at some point, right, david you you get this question is how many people 32 is it enough? it's a minority within the republican party. yet the parties beholden to that. and will they get fatigued? at some point? that's the question, right? so if you get well, they will they get fatigued enough that they're going to be willing to abandon him or or will they say we want to win in a general election broadly, more broadly, and 34 senate seats that are up in these governor races, and there's lots of other races gonna be on the ticket in 24. all these other public candidates will look at fatigued long before the former president is completely into the fatigue will, but it is already seems a little like just a little bit. and i think, you know, don't forget that the point that i'm making like how many people or like in pennsylvania, my home state. does dave mccormack get in the race to run against bob casey. he's gonna be on the

ticket with a guy who took a you know baseball bat to him in the primary. like how does dave mccormack running the race on a ticket with donald trump at the top of the ticket, who criticized dave mccormack from peter rhino? how do those? how do those people who are otherwise good candidates get in vans? point you know you talk about the border. donald trump is one border that i don't think you can straddle. you gotta be on one side or the other at the end of the day, and a lot of these candidates think that they can finesse this issue. and i'm not sure at the end of the day that that is going to make it. i mean, desantis is bet and is that you know you can be sort of trump. i've said it before that. you you, you can be like, uh, you know the methadone for people who are hooked on response and want to quit the habit. you know your bed. it's better for your health and you get the same culture war high. we'll see if that works because you know the push back. i get hurt in that it's like, why do we need a tribute band when the original band still playing right? like right. you need not trump, the american voter has not been offered a real

alternative and republican primary since 2016 and i think that there is a much bigger appetite than people realize to just see somebody take him head on. you do not beat him by being trump like that's why i argue ron desantis for all the strength he has, in many ways is very overhyped because he's never directly really taken donald trump on, nor has anyone significantly in the field. i just feel like tonight, there's just a little bit of a sense of disappointment overall. in other words, you had this moment where for the first time in american history american president was actually indicted. walk into a building wasn't handcuffed but was fingerprinted and walked out. and. that should really sober up a country. uh and instead i think the indictment was weak enough that it depressed some people on the left, and it animated people on the right and trump didn't learn anything. and i just i think i think i think we're still in some some process. i don't understand the point of waiting around for something that sticks as audie and alyssa were saying they may be waiting for quite a

while. i'm just putting a legal overlay on all this. this is the first case. out of the chute, and the next appearance is in december. i mean, realistically , they were talking in the in the transcript today about a possible trial in spring, but there seems to be a consensus. how realistic is that these other cases if they're going to come along, which they may? well i know how long these things take to get to trial. you're looking realistically at a year or so calculation. i don't know that the judge is going to be willing to try these cases in the summer of 2024 when you all will be at the conventions, and there will be primaries and debates. the question is, we're just having the other indictments will that have some sort of cumulative effect? and then the question is, when do those actual other indictments? if they're going to come at all? when would they actually be and the other indictments are gonna be much harder to roll your eyes at so van? you know, i heard you say earlier about and i agree with you guys. it was dreadful to hear trump say what he said about the judge and what he said about the prosecutor. and involving their families. and you said you just don't do that.

but you know what part of donald trump's gestalt is? he does the things that other people don't do. he's a rule breaker and in some ways that certifies him as not a politician, i'm willing to say stuff other people aren't going to say i'm you know, that's i don't think if you're waiting for him to develop the core, um i think you've got a long way ahead of waiting for it. but what i'm saying is that he's playing with something that's very dangerous right now. and there is that there could be a moment and i hope it doesn't happen where he licenses someone who actually does something. yes i already did it and they attacked a building full of lawmakers and people died. it's not that hard to imagine someone attacking a human being. and if that happens, i do wonder if this idea that i can shoot somebody in the military avenue . nothing happens. that will be a moment the republican party is gonna have to look down a very different to have to make the realization because he will not fair enough. fair enough brags getting death threats people that he's come after i've already got more than 100. police officers attacked on january 6th. i mean, it's not as if people have not been injured,

and i would just say this about the election, the upcoming election. in 2016. when i joined the campaign, it was a nascent stages. everyone said, you know, this guy is never going to win. it's never gonna happen. it's crazy, all the things that i can hit you to hear right every day, so never say never never say never began 75 million plus people that voted for him and people are not so happy. if you look at joe biden's numbers, and so by the way, i described the whole thing to you joining the campaign. you're exactly thank you, everybody coming up capitol hill reaction to stunning images like this at first in american history. sunday night. we're trying somethining a little different story. startling is the sheer number of migrants on this track . one whole hour. world's best journalists dig deeper is san francisco of failed city. the

stories they can't ignore godzilla. get mad and go kill that thing. go in depth every sunday night. if there are people willing to take risks. then they're gonna be people that left behind the story with anderson cooper premieres sunday , april 16th at eight on cnn were reinventing o network with smarter, more efficient routes so you can deliver more value to your customers fast, reliable, perfectly orchestrated. the united states postal service compared with other choose one perfecto chew protects from fleas and ticks for 12 weeks, nearly three times longer used with caution and dogs with the history of seizures in neurological disorders. protection that lasts longer. bravo bravo, ecto! bravo sensitive didn't get that funny . you need a hug. you also need consumer self. get the exact same coverage as the nation's leading carriers and 100% us based customer support starting at $20 consumer cellular.

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cleaning crystals enough for up to 40 windows. just pay a separate fee call or go online now. good morning, everyone we do begin with breaking news this morning. the former president tonight mentioned the reaction on capitol hill to the indictment today, as you might imagine, he did not cover the entire spectrum of it, so i want to go to cnn's melanie's an owner who's at the capital's order republicans democrats, saying both about the indictment and the former president's speech tonight, anderson will republicans are rallying around the former president, both figuratively and literally. marjorie taylor green within new

york city this morning for a pro trump rally. she then flew to florida to be with trump. at mar-a-lago, and she told me that trump is angry but focused. and he has committed like i've never seen him before. she also told me she cried during the speech tonight. she called it incredible. one of the best speeches she has ever heard trump give, and she also told me she has been talking as well as speaker kevin mccarthy about ways to hold. alvin bragg, the manhattan district attorney, accountable that is something that, mccarthy said. also earlier in a statement today, a trio of house committees have been trying to investigate, brag they're trying to seek his testimony, but so far bragg has rebuffed their requests, but they are getting some support from senate republicans for this effort to investigate bragged that includes someone like thom tillis, a member of gop leadership, who hasn't always been aligned with donald trump's have some significant comments from him there. we are still waiting to hear, though, from mitch mcconnell. that is one significant republican that has yet to weigh in and then on the other side of the aisle, you

have democrats who are offering a pretty restrained response. you get a sense that they're trying to stay above the political fray. chuck schumer put out a very brief statement and just said that he hopes that trump has a fair trial and that there is no place in our justice system for intimidation. and then we have yet to hear from hakeem jeffries, the house democratic leader we mentioned earlier. can you talk a little bit more? by the reaction of senator mitt romney, who is obviously a staunch trump critic. yeah i found romney's comments. some of the most notable today he had been silent up until now. he was clearly waiting until seeing these charges come out and actually seeing the indictment, but it's notable because he is someone who voted twice to convict trump in his impeachment trials. he has said he is not going to vote for trump for president again, but he had some very critical words for the district attorney, he said in his statement. i believe that president trump's character and conduct make him unfit for the office. even so, i believe the new york prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda. so even some

of trump's fiercest critics are coming to events which really just shows which way the political winds are blowing inside the gop right now, anderson i appreciate it. thanks, jake. anderson thanks so much the former president's attacks on manhattan district attorney alvin bragg tonight mirror similar attacks by his political allies. i think the entire thing is crap. he hates trump person denigrating integrity. the integrity of our entire judicial system is alvin bragg, this soros funded political activist who is occupying the manhattan d a s office. this is selective prosecution. if i were president trump, i take this always to the supreme court. no one should be above the law. but no one should be a target of the law. it actually helps donald trump become the 47th, president of the united states. let's bring in someone who led the first impeachment of donald trump in the house of representatives and also served on the house select committee investigation into the january 6th riot. democratic

congressman adam schiff of california first reminder that we asked each and every single member of the republican every republican member of the house judiciary committee to come on the program. this evening. none of them told us that they were available. congressman schiff. we've heard from a lot of legal experts, including those sympathetic to those who want to prosecute donald trump, who say that they are underwhelmed by the indictment that they are not sure that it is strong. some found it disappointing. what was your reaction? well my reaction both to the indictment and to those images today was this is what accountability looks like. michael cohen was sentenced to time in jail for his participation in the same scheme , and i don't remember republicans coming rushing to michael cohen's defense. this is what the law should do. that is

prosecutors should follow the evidence when they lead to probable cause and proof beyond a reasonable doubt in the prosecutor's view, that is, they believe that they can prove to a jury satisfaction. they should be charged. donald trump has been charged. he will get a fair trial. um what i found most notable about the factual summary was the evidence of donald trump's knowledge and intent. that is evidence that, for example, he was talking to others in this scheme about trying to delay the payment of the hush money. until after the election when it might not be need to be paid at all that says this is about the election. this is about keeping information from voters and hiding that not reporting. that is a campaign crime. so it looks like that they they they're alluding to very direct evidence whether the jury will be convinced that will be up to the jury, but i do think that this is what accountability is about. and there can't be a different standard for presidents anymore

than ordinary citizens. well i mean, theoretically, you're correct. but also, of course, this is the first time in the history of this great republic that a former president has been indicted and arraigned. it is not the first time we should note that a former president stands accused of committing crimes. therefore the point i'm trying to make is that one would think there would be a higher bar for this case, even though we are yes. a country of laws, not men. do you think this case is strong enough to warrant these historic charges? i don't think there should be a higher bar. when it comes to presidents, ordinary citizens. i think it should be the same bar you do have to look at. can you prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt, knowing the likely defenses and we hear the defense from donald trump the defenses? this is a politically motivated prosecution. i'm innocent. i never had that

affair, etcetera. so you know, the prosecutor has to determine whether they believe they can prove the charges. the manhattan d a believes that he can, and that would be put to the test. now i do think there are more serious charges against donald trump that are being considered in georgia, and even more serious charges being considered by the department of justice, and i wish the department of justice in particular. hadn't taken so long that that investigation wasn't taking so long because you would ideally want to see the strongest. most serious charges brought first. but that's not the fault of the manhattan d a. who brought the charges when the charges were ready when the evidence in his view was present, but i do think that the justice department. not to have moved with a much greater sense of urgency, and then we might be in a different cases different situation, at least in the order of charges. you talk about how these, um, payments from david pecker, the

ceo of american media, the parent company of the national enquirer, $150,000 to catch and kill. the story of karen macdougal, the playmate of the year. playboy playmate of the year. uh basically hush money to keep her story away from the voters allegedly same thing with michael cohen $130,000 to porn star and director stormy daniels and you, you're suggesting that those payments because, according to the statement of fact, in the indictment, there's those payments were meant not to hide this from melania trump. but to hide these incidents from voters, and i hear you, but i would note that while you're talking about the department of justice department of justice, according to reporting looked into charging donald trump with that specific campaign finance crime, and they declined. well that's that's what the reporting says. and obviously they didn't bring charges the way they did against michael cohen. but it's also the case that the u. s

attorney at the time, apparently wrote about this in his book that bill barr was seeking to interfere in that case and prohibit the justice department from going forward when those charges were being considered. but but at the end of the day, it's up to the manhattan district attorney to determine whether he believes that a state laws have been violated. and the proof is there regardless of whether bill barr or others decided differently. uh and so the manhattan d a has gone forward. the proof will be what it is. is it sufficient to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt? but i don't think the manhattan d a has a choice. if the d a concludes this is where the evidence led, we would charge others in like circumstances. then you go forward. to do something less to basically say now we're gonna give presidents a pass. we're gonna treat presidents differently. that's something less than justice and my view, something less than democracy.

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retail banking in california by j.d. power. plus buy now and pay overtime with a firm at birth .com. i'm melanie is known in washington. and this is cnn. in addition to making history, there's also been a jarring day and not just in the former president of united states has been charged with multiple felonies. it's also been jarring in a purely visual sense in the stark contrast between the two sets of images you see on the screen right now. president appearing drawn small, surrounded by council in manhattan courtroom limiting his words. yes i do and not guilty. then later in the one place he can truly feel larger than life. surrounded by fans can shape his reality at mar-a-lago, of course, feeling in control of his destiny. that makes sense, but in reality, starting today and likely for months to come in this case and others, his true reality will likely involve courtrooms, attorneys and a defense fight news continues next